


A girl in the midlands

by pengukat



Series: where do we go from here [3]
Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternative Perspective, Animal Abuse, Dubious Consent, Endgame: Villaneve, F/F, Post Season 1, Post Series 1, Sexual Violence, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2019-05-31 13:37:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 31,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15120530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pengukat/pseuds/pengukat
Summary: Villanelle tries to get her life back on track after the events in Paris.Companion piece to "Someone to sit in my chair, and ruin my sleep" from Villanelle's perspective.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The Villanelle side of things that no one asked for. 
> 
> You should probably read "Someone to sit in my chair, and ruin my sleep" first, because it spoils events in that story, and also you might be confused why people are acting this way.
> 
> Just wanted to flesh this out, for myself, and for anyone else interested.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: violence and cruelty to animals. Attempted murder.

When she flees, it is in a maelstrom of dark red and blind pain. She stumbles, fumbles, bumbles, in any which way direction, maybe up, maybe down, always forward. 

When she falls, strong, assertive hands catch her, and whisk her away inside a dark unremarkable van, noteworthy for its interior containing enough medical equipment and drugs to keep her alive just long enough for next destination. Where that is, she doesn't know. Who they are, she doesn't care. The only thing that matters is that she is moving, moving, moving, somewhere, anywhere, anywhere but - 

===

It takes her longer to recover than she should.

At first she pays it no mind. Waiting for her body to heal is a matter of patience. She is used to waiting, has had years of practice in one institution after another, and she is used to pain, from years of experiencing it and inflicting it. 

But one week turns into to two, and two into four, and then four into eight. Her body is taking too long to stitch itself back together, even under the expert guidance of the experienced physicians at her aid; with their help, in this secretive top-class multipurpose medical facility in god-knows-where, she should be been ready much sooner. Something has gotten in the way of her body's natural healing ability, but exactly what is unclear. 

Physically, she should be in the prime of her life. She maintains her body like the well-oiled machine it is, the efficient engine she needs it to be. She gets in her daily steps, makes sure to eat a balanced diet every day. Mentally -

The task before her is simply to recover, and the fastest way to recovery is a clear, empty mind, free of stray thoughts. So, mentally, she is fine. Completely. 

Three whole months go by before she is able to move without pain, and another month before she is able to move through the world with the efficiency she is accustomed to. The moment she is ready, they allow her to access the training facility, where she slowly rebuilds her body muscle, acclimates herself to the feel of knives and guns and killing tools in her hands, becomes familiar in her own skin again. In between, she runs in circles, over and over, as far as she can, until her legs give way, and when they are ready again she resumes. Every day she runs a little longer, breathes a little more easily, moves a little more easily.

The first person they send against her in a fight, she dispatches with ease. And the second, and the third. 

So, she is fine now. Back to normal. Free to go back to her life. She is more than ready. 

==

They bundle her into an unmarked car, where she is knocked out for some unspecified number of hours, and when she wakes up, she has been deposited outside a small apartment building somewhere in the 20ème arrondissement, a set of keys in her pockets.

There's an elevator but she prefers the stairs. 

Apartment 4E is a plain, mostly unfurnished one-bedroom-one-living-room-one-bathroom situation, with a tower of cardboard boxes towered neatly in the centre of the living room. There is an unmade full-sized mattress in the bedroom atop an ugly metal frame, which she is sure will squeak, and the bathroom sink is the kind has two separate taps for hot and cold water. She already hates the place. 

She trudges to the bare mattress and flops down face first. The boxes can wait. Inside are the contents of her old apartment - clothes from her closets, the contents of her drawers, kitchenware, bathroom accessories, the assorted knick-knacks and souvenirs that have accumulated over the years - whatever the nameless but efficient and diligent movers chosen to pack and move for her. They are typically quite thorough, though she has learnt not to get too tied to anything. Particularly valuable things often go wandering, and perishable goods or things easily replaced are not prioritised. Anything damaged, dirtied or stained - things have been utterly ruined - things that are completely beyond repair, completely unsalvageable -

She won't be seeing them again. 

Eventually she will have to pry herself from the bed, so that she can track down the box that contains her metal chest that holds nearly all of her saved-up cash, so that she can go and buy something to eat. Eventually. For now she just relaxes, letting the sensation of freedom flow through her. 

===

It takes a week for the first postcard to arrive, in the mail. Apparently they have not managed to find a new handler willing to meet her in person.

In the mean time, she has been busy shopping. Lots and lots of shopping. Throwing out the old bed and replacing it with a mahogany frame and a memory foam mattress; new wardrobes and drawers, which she has filled with brand new clothes that have caught her fancy - fashions have moved on the months she was out of commission. 

Most of the boxes are still unopened; she stopped once she found her cash. She isn't in the mood to excavate her old stuff yet, encountering what's there and what's been lost. 

She purchased tubs of paint, painted half of the living room salmon pink, then changed her mind halfway and started painting every wall a light pastel blue. One wall remains unpainted, because she bought a fifty-inch flatscreen TV and had it wall-mounted - she'll have to figure out how to work around that later. 

So, she has kept herself busy. But she is eager for a kill, something to actually get her her blood pumping, to raise her pulse. Frankfurt will be good for her. 

Romsky Polonoff is in the city for an investment conference, one of those large lavish multi-hotel affairs to gather people with a lot of money, and people with a great need to impress the former to gain access to their money, all in the same place. 

Thankfully her new remote handler is on top of things - her hotel room is adequately furnished, and the location is close to the conference site, not one of the hotels where the conference is being hosted. The conference itself is well-attended enough that she can mingle among the attendees as well as regular hotel guests and tourists without standing out. There are an abundance of potential witnesses and security technology, but the meandering corridors, the plethora of events, and the large event space mean that there are multiple opportunities to plan her attack. She has been spoilt with a smorgasbord of options. 

In the end, she opts for something simple: pose as a small start-up CEO in, well, some industry or other, looking for an angel investor; knock on his hotel room door at a quiet hour; engage him in small talk, and take him out when he's not paying attention. She's got just the right outfit for it too - a pencil skirt and jacket combo she'd picked up last year, just a tad too tight around her chest and waist.

On her second night in the city, she waits for him to return to the hotel in the evening, and half an hour later slinks into the hotel after him. When he opens the door, he is a little disgruntled at the disruption, but his expression smooths over quickly once she starts talking. She's still got the touch. 

She backs him into the hotel room slowly, without him realising he is being forced backwards. He suggests a drink for the two of them; she readily agrees. With his back to her, she retrieves her hairpin syringe from the back of her head. Her hair tumbles down over her shoulders.

Now would be a good moment. 

He turns back around, holding out the glass. He chuckles at her changed appearance. Tells her he likes it more when he can see her exposed neck. 

She giggles, demurely, twirling the hairpin in her hand. 

Her feet are planted where they stand. She is four full hand spans from him, too far away. 

He holds out the glass again, shakes it. 

Her feet take one step towards him, and one step only. She is still too far away. 

She imagines his face, bug-eyed, gasping, blood trickling from an open wound as he spasms and dies.

He shakes the glass again, impatient. 

She needs to take the glass.

She needs to stab him in the neck. 

She clears her throat. Finds her voice.

Finds herself saying, "I have to go." 

Against her will, her feet move her, away from her intended and surprised target towards the door; she wrenches it open and steps out into the hallway. She walks briskly to the elevator, presses the button, just once, waits for the ding, enters calmly when it arrives. She marches through the lobby, head held high. The moment the cool night air hits her face, she begins to sprint, blindly, into the dark.

===

When she has finally stopped running mindlessly, she finds herself in a completely different part of the city. A sparse number of people and cars are on the street, likely heading to an early day shift. The pointed heels she chose to complete her ensemble have both their heels snapped off.

This has honestly never happened to her before. 

She is at a loss for her next step. She doesn't need second chances, because she has always succeeded on the first. 

First she needs a shower. She wanders a little, flags down a nearby cab, and returns to her hotel room to think. 

Her face is now known to him. His guard will be up the next time he sees her face. There are still three more days to the conference. She will wait for an opportunity and strike. For now she will rest up and regroup.

Another whole day goes by, and then another, and suddenly the conference is over and he is heading for the airport. 

She receives an angry call asking what the hell happened.

"There was no good opportunity." A lie. "Security was heavy." Also a lie. "He was on to me. It was too risky." Only partly true. 

They ask if there are any lingering issues from her injury. 

"No," she says emphatically. She is in perfect shape. She does not have any intrusive thoughts. She does not have any nightmares that wake her up sweating in the middle of the night. If she does, she doesn't remember them.

The one constant her entire life has been that her actions in the world are not based on fear. That. It is what she has been told, time and time again. She knows it is the truth. She is not afraid. 

She doesn't know what it is. 

===

They dispatch another contractor to Amsterdam to take care of her failure. In the meantime, she is sent instantly on her next job, which she greatly welcomes. This is not only a test of her abilities, she knows, but a chance to make sure she is pulling her weight. 

She heads to Barcelona for Johnathan Novack, who according to his file has a penchant for sex workers, being dominated, and erotic asphyxiation. This one is going to be easy, though in theory the last guy was easy, too, a thought she shoves to the back of her mind. She isn't up against a deadline for this one so she takes her time. 

As a software engineer, his digital security precautions are wholly inadequate. She hacks into his accounts, figures out his tastes and where he procures his services, creates a number of fake profiles designed just for him, and waits for him to bite. 

A few days later she shows up at the agreed-upon hotel room at the agreed-upon time, dressed and equipped for the part. She has considered fucking him before killing him, but she's not in the mood for sex, and hasn't felt the urge for months. In all honesty, she is not yet ready to expose and explain the scars on her body, but it's just another thing these days that she tosses aside because it's irrelevant. 

She gets straight to business, telling him to strip completely and sit down in the wooden straight back chair, and when he's complied she secures a blindfold around his eyes, and ties down both his legs and one arm to the chair's arms and legs. She circles him as she recites a bunch of sexual denigrating talk that gets his dick hard, and commands him to jerk himself off with his remaining free hand. As he tugs ungracefully on his dick, she imagines wrapping her fingers around his throat, crushing his windpipe, cutting off the blood flow to his brain, squeezing the life out of him with her bare hands; his tongue lolling out, his mouth foaming, his eyes bulging under the blindfold.

She wraps the noose, fashioned out of simple rope, around his neck. The hand on his dick moves faster. 

She tightens the noose. Just a little. It can get tighter. 

She just has to pull a little harder. Just a little more.

His face is turning a dark, ugly red. 

Just a little more. 

Just -

Okay, it looks like she's going to fail to perform for the second time. 

She tells him to slow his pace. He does, albeit after a moment of hesitation.

She slings the long end of the noose over the top of the adjacent wardrobe door and secures it tightly to the handle on the other side. His body is jerked to full upright position; he'll hang himself if he moves just the wrong way, and eventually he will, once the orgasm flows from his body, once he gets tired, once his body sags.

Keep going, she allows him. Make a lot of noise. He does, enthusiastically. 

She walks out of the hotel room and lets it click shut softly. Check-out time isn't until 11am tomorrow morning. They won't find him until it's too late.

===

An overly-conscientious hotel maid finds him before it's too late. 

===

They fly out a retinue of handlers and experts to Barcelona, so that she feels less lonely on her flight back to Paris, she supposes. It would make her very important, except that they are flying her in economy and it is an outrage, so she refuses to answer any of their questions. 

The battery of questions continues once she is escorted behind closed doors. 

How's Paris this time of year? Have you finished unpacking and moving in yet? Are you eating properly? What are you eating? 

Do you remember your dreams? What do you see in this picture here? And this other picture? 

Is something bothering you? 

No? Are you sure?

Do you think it could be your injury?

Do you think it could be her? 

Who do I mean by "her?" You tell me. 

They run her through a sequence of tests, checking her blood, and hormones, and heart, and brain. The results tell the doctors nothing. 

They put her in front of a handful of soft, cute, fluffy animals that children would love to keep as animals - a pair of rabbits, hamsters, a kitten, a dog - and a selection of weapons - knives, a hand gun, a chain saw. She squeezes the hamsters in her hand until they are pulp, tossing the innards loose in front of the dog to see if the dog will eat them. She wrings the necks of the rabbits, offers those to the dog as well, and when it refuses those as well, punches it in the skull to death. She chases the kitten around the room with the chainsaw, just for fun, ensuring maximum messiness for the person cleaning up after her.

She overhears them discussing and dissecting her furiously, frantically, in snatches: 

_She is over-empathising with the victim -_

_It is a learned response to her own helplessness -_

_Remorse, perhaps? But it's impossible, she cannot feel -_

_Maybe it's fear. Maybe she finally -_

_Blatant nonsense, she is incapable of -_

_It is Anna -_

_It is Eve -_

_It is both of them -_

_Is she compromised?_

_Is she defective?_

_Is she still of use?_

She manages to get through it all with her dignity and temper intact. They are grasping at straws. There is nothing wrong with her. This is meaningless. She just needs to get back out there and try again.

If she keeps repeating it to herself it'll eventually become true.

===

She has a partner for the next one - a handler to keep an eye on her while serving as her chauffeur. Now, he is watching her her laptop screen intently, as she balances it on her lap in the passenger seat. She is hacking into Ivaan Deppli's parked car a few spots away, breaking through the computer's operating system with ease. The latest feature update shipped with an as-yet-unpatched vulnerability, and after trawling deep enough on the dark web she found tools that she could leverage to help her break through.

If she can't do it up close, the way she likes it, she'll do it from a distance. 

Her target emerges from the building, climbs into his car, and starts the ignition, driving off. Her handler-driver tails him from a safe distance, while making sure they are close enough to maintain connectivity to the other vehicle.

She'll wait until they hit the highway, picks up a bit of speed, and she'll hit Enter. That's all she has to do. 

Soon enough, they're going at eighty, one hundred kilometres per hour, and her hand is still hovered over the keyboard.

The handler looks over at her, exasperated; he doesn't have the time or attention to wonder what she is waiting for while maintaining the right distance. 

One hundred and twenty kilometres per hour. 

She just has to hit one key. Just press one button, and everything will be normal again. Everything will go back to how it was. She can leave this small blip behind her, in the rearview mirror. She just has to put her hand on the key, and press down -

She forces her fingers to touch the Enter key, just resting atop it. Her fingertips can feel its texture. She rubs it, ever so gently. She just has to apply a little pressure downward. Just a little - she just has to - 

The laptop is snatched from her lap. Her driver-handler is gripping the monitor tightly, getting his damn dirty fingerprints all over the screen. She hates when people touch her monitor screen. 

"I could kill you for that," she says, mildly.

She is ignored. Her driver-handler shoves the laptop under the driving wheel on his knee, and taps Enter.

Nothing happens. Nothing will, until the target attempts to slow down, and finds that his brakes are not responding. 

The driver-handler changes lanes and prepares to exit the highway. 

This was her last chance, and she knows it.

===

Back on the job for just under two weeks, and she's already been put on probation. 

They don't send someone to kill her, which is a mild consolation. It's middle management and the supporting cast who are expendable, not assets like her. Besides, likely no one wants to test how deadly she might become against her peers. She isn't sure she wants to test it either. 

She has become so useless and defanged that it would be worth more trouble to end her than just to let her exist as she is now. The knowledge is humbling.

She is faced with empty days upon empty days. She has not yet opened all her boxes yet, since she had not expected to still be in this apartment; now she isn't in the mood, for anything - not food, not cooking, not TV, not movies. Not sex. No interest there at all. 

She buys more clothes, but everything she buys doesn't look good on her. Nothing looks good on her. 

She takes the fifty-inch TV off the wall because it is simply too huge, and the replacement one she buys is too small, and so she buys another one, and none of them are right, and now she has too many TVs and nothing to watch. 

She leaves the apartment and tries to be a tourist in her own city. Instead she feels hollow, like she doesn't belong, like she is going through the motions. She can't remember what used to make Paris feel like home. 

They didn't pack her treadmill, so she goes for long, long runs around the city, through other neighbourhoods, hours at a time, until she is tired all over and drenched in sweat and completely exhausted. 

Nothing seems to help.

Maybe when her body was knitting itself back together, something healed the wrong way. Maybe the building blocks holding her together are misaligned. Maybe the pathways between her brain and her body are out of position. 

Maybe when Eve stabbed her in the gut, she also caused irreversible physical brain damage that for some odd reason didn't manifest visibly on CAT scans. The gut's connected to the brain, right? Somehow? Brain damage would explain why she doesn't feel like sex at all these days. Or much of anything else. 

She opens the door, just a crack, to allow herself to think about Eve. That last moment they shared, in her apartment, when she felt so warm, and so certain, and so right - 

She can only do it in short bursts. Whenever she thinks for too long, something coils up in her stomach, oily and tarred, just behind the scarred, tender, skin, and it threatens to burst the wound open again. Whenever that happens, she goes for a run, and just keeps running, and running, and running, until she is completely empty inside. 

She can't keep running. She's starting to develop shin splints. 

===

Communication with a handler is generally more of a one-way, top-down thing. In other words, they come to you when they want, not the other way around.

She manages to get their attention by wandering around the touristy section of Montmartre holding up a cardboard sign with the words "LAISSEZ-MOI LA TUER" - whenever someone asks, she explains it's a political statement about capitalism and patriarchy and the government, and lets people take it however they choose. 

A few days later the handler shows up at her doorstep, hand-delivering a postcard bearing a picture of the Tower of London. 

Before he hands it over, he explains that there is no official contract. No one wants to bother to pay for Eve Polastri to die. (Can either of them imagine who would? Absurd. They both laugh.) This is merely permission. He needs reassurance from her that she will behave discreetly and responsibly, and not jeopardise the existence of the organisation. She can expect the usual level of aid from the invisible hand that guides them all, but for the most part she will be operating as a free agent. 

None of it matters to her. She just needs an excuse to kill Eve. 

Then he asks her why.

Because - there simply is is no other explanation for the way she is now. Kill Eve, and she will return to normal.

The handler ponders. If she's sure this will work -

She is. She has no other choice available to her.

This started with Eve. Villanelle will finish it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Villanelle arrives in England.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: dubious sexual consent. Forced sexual interaction. Violence.

There is no point in waiting for the rest of your life to start once you have a path of action. 

She packs lightly, stuffing everything into a small duffel bag, dressing for comfort and practicality over the prettier, fancier threads that require more maintenance. She bundles what remains of her cash into a tight wad, and stuffs it in the bottom. She's glad she didn't unpack her boxes now. If everything goes well, she can put this all behind her, get some jobs under her belt again, and she'll be able to afford to negotiate a move to a better district. 

First thing the next morning, she heads for the train station. 

There is a train that departs Paris for London at a very specific time, early in the day, when very specific people will be working their specific shift in one of the passport control lines. It's important to get the right-timed train tickets so that lining up at that time doesn't look too out of the ordinary, and then you have to make sure to line up in one of the right lines, which can take some shuffling and working around. But once you're there, you can present your passport to those specific immigration officers, along with an envelope of cash marked with a specific symbol that specific people will recognise. There is a mutual understanding that your documents will not be examined too thoroughly, and the record of your emigration will not be recorded, and you will be waved on through. 

It's still morning when she arrives in London. She finds a cash exchange, trades in some euros for pounds, and immediately hops on the London Tube for Ealing. She's been here before. She knows where she's going. 

===

There appears to be a new couple living in the terrace house that she broke into what felt like a lifetime ago. She finds out only after breaking in again.

In her haste to get here, she neglected to do any research. She assumed certain states would be immutable, which was a mistake.

She pulls out her phone. A quick search for Polastri returns a few hits, but nothing definitive. She ponders going to the address of the bridge club at the community centre and tailing the husband; a few more searches and she learns the bridge club is no longer even an option - it no longer meets regularly there due to Mr Polastri's move. She tries a few perfunctory attempts to hack into a potential Polastri Royal Mail account for a forwarding address, but gives up; she doesn't have the hardware or tools to brute force password guesses right now, and there are probably easier ways to find their next location. 

Waiting for the coast to be clear, she checks the front door for any return-to-sender mail - even better, there is a scrawled forwarding address on the stack of mail left on the door step. Waters Edge, Canterbury, Kent. She's got her next destination.

===

Eve is not in Canterbury either. 

Her husband is, but there is no sign of Eve to be found. Judging from the state of his apartment, he is living a bachelor's life. She has pegged him as the one who kept the Polastri household running smoothly, but maybe he is in the middle of a rough patch. She searches high and low for a hint of where Eve might be. 

She decides just to get the information straight from the horse's mouth. She locates a pay phone and calls the cel phone number she found scrawled in one of the notes scattered around the kitchen. He answers on the third ring.

She lays on the accent and the cheery tone real thick, apologising for calling him, but she's one of Eve's friends, and don't they remember meeting once at a bridge club socials in 2015? She's found something of Eve's - an old reference book she forgot to return - and she feels so bad she's held onto it for so long, so she wants to return it, but for some reason the number she has for Eve isn't working any more, but fortunately Niko's has worked, and therefore which address she should ship it to?

He seems polite but distant, at first, and then resigned. The truth is, they're living separately at the moment ("Separately?! Oh no, what on earth happened?" - we're divorced, he clarifies with a bit of bite) and he doesn't have Eve's new phone number, but he does have her forwarding address, and whenever she's ready he'll recite it for her.

What an idiot. She wonders how Niko Polastri will feel when he finds out he's the one responsible for sending his ex-wife's killer straight to her doorstep.  

===

It's evening by the time she arrives in Birmingham. 

She locates the street and the number of the town house she is looking for. The light is on in the window. She can see the outline of a person behind the curtains, sitting low, maybe on a couch, hunched over a computer screen, or a meal, with light and sound blaring from the TV. She would recognise that hair in her sleep. 

The oily, slimy pit in her stomach lurches, a serpent in the deep trying to slither free. 

She loses track of how long she stands there in the street, just staring. Any moment now, Eve could open the curtain, peer outside, and see her standing right there. How would Eve react?

Would Eve run?

_Don't run_

Would Eve scream?

_I'm not going to hurt you_

Would Eve pull a knife on her and finish what she had started?

_You can't_

The oil refuses to settle. The tar pins her feet to the ground.

All she has to is kick down the door, walk inside, get it over with, and get back to her life. She doesn't have a weapon on her, but there are probably a ton inside. She doesn't need a weapon. She is the weapon. 

The living room light turns off. Another light, upstairs, turns on. Eve must be retiring for the night. 

Maybe she needs to be more tactical about this. If anything, she has to be honest with herself. There is no guarantee of success if she walks into that house tonight. 

She can afford to give it some time. All she has to do is stick to her usual routine. She'll scope the location out. She'll familiarise herself with the target's patterns and schedules. She'll wait until she's good and ready, and she'll take the target out. 

The upstairs light turns off. 

The oily serpent in her belly hisses, its tongue lashing out. It's heavy. It's suffocating. It burns.

It's been a long day. Right now, she's in no rush to go anywhere.

===

It turns out that surveillance of a target in a foreign location is REALLY tedious when you have to deal with all the logistics yourself. 

She converts all her remaining cash to pounds. Money exchanges here have a real shitty exchange rate.

She finds a room in a nearby motel, but it's clear that after a few days she's going to run out of cash if she keeps this up. And she's probably going to need to, because after these few days of tailing Eve it seems like she still can't seem to get into her groove. 

She checks out a few rental properties at real estate agencies, but it turns out they require things like proof of residency, credit history, employment status, a reference from her current employer, and three months' worth of deposit. If Eve were an official target, none of these things would be a problem. But Eve's not, and it's enough to make her walk right up to Eve's door and kill her there and then out of sheer annoyance. She tries, and ends up loitering at Eve's front gate again for hours. It draws more than a few stares. She's getting pretty tired of her own ineptitude, to be honest. 

It takes her a couple of days, but she manages to find someone online advertising a few rental units they're willing to rent out, cash only, under the table. As luck would have it, one of the properties is right across the street from Eve. It's tiny and unfurnished, but it's cheap, has a stove, a bathroom, and is available on the spot. More importantly, the single window has a clear line of sight to Eve's front door. 

After that, it's a matter of finding ways to supplement her income so she can afford the rent. Luckily for her there are quite a few opportunities around the neighbourhood. She spends a day asking around, and by the end of the day she's got a number of part-time shifts lined up at numerous establishments in the area, who don't care that she lacks paperwork and wants to be paid in cash. She has made sure to go to places run by people who looked easy to work with. It makes them easier to manipulate. 

===

With all the mind-numbingly boring logistics of securing herself a semi-stable foothold in the area now out of the way, it is impossible to deny it any longer: following Eve around is even worse.

Eve has become, to put it mildly, boring. Soul-crushingly, heartbreakingly mundane.

At first Villanelle isn't sure what to make of it, following Eve to and from work, mapping out her travel routes, schedules, daily routine, day in, day out. It takes her only three days to learn it by heart.

In normal circumstances, killing Eve would be a cinch. There are a hundred ways she could play this. She could ambush her from twenty different blind spots en route to work. She could nudge Eve off a train platform. She could set Eve's house on fire. She could rig her stove to explode. She could fill a bathtub with water and drop Eve in it along with a hairdryer plugged into the wall. She could push Eve out a window. She could poison all of Eve's bottled drinks. 

She could snap Eve's neck. She could stick a knife in Eve's gut.

It would be so easy. No one would even notice. 

Eve has no friends. No hobbies. Even her choice of takeaway is predictable.

The oily serpent inside her coils and uncoils, seething with resentment. 

It's like Eve has taken everything that was interesting about her, wrenched it out of herself, and flushed it down a toilet. 

It's like Eve is walking around already dead. 

===

She imagines what is going through Eve's mind about every day, every night, as Eve crawls through the molasses of her meagre existence. 

Does Eve still think about her?

_I think about you all the time_

Has Eve completely left everything behind her?

_I think about you all the time_

Does Eve regret a single thing she's done?

_I think about you all the time_

She imagines all the ways she could kill Eve, but in the end settles on just the one - a knife to the gut, right where Eve had done it to her. It's only right. Keep it simple. 

She rehearses it in her head, over and over, in every spare waking moment when she is not at work, shelving groceries, or serving food, or cleaning dishes, when she is not bored out of her skull watching Eve move through her monotonous routine. The image training is something they taught her to do back in the beginning. She has always found it a reliable technique to fall back on.

She'll do it in Eve's home. She'll catch Eve off guard, probably after work, when Eve is likely to be at her most tired and drained. She'll corner Eve, target her exposed abdomen, stick the knife in once, and pull it out. Simple.

She runs through it again.

She'll do it in Eve's home. She'll catch Eve off guard, probably after work, when Eve is likely to be at her most tired and drained. She'll corner Eve, target her exposed abdomen, stick the knife in once, and pull it out.

And again. 

She'll do it in Eve's home. She'll catch Eve off guard, probably after work, when Eve is likely to be at her most tired and drained. She'll corner Eve, target her exposed abdomen, stick the knife in once, and pull it out.

And again.

And again.

And again.

With every mental run through, the serpent in her gut stirs lightly. She is waiting for it to burst forth, in a glorious, violent righteousness. Then she'll know she's ready. 

===

Maybe it's the proximity and exposure to the other woman, but all of a sudden she starts remembering her dreams. It's not every night at first, but it begins to happen more and more and soon it becomes so unbearable she's afraid to fall asleep.

What makes things worse is that her desire has reawakened at the most inopportune time. 

The dreams always involve Eve, and her, together. It always happens somewhere they've met before - a hospital bathroom, a clearing in the woods, a kitchen, her old apartment in Paris. They always get close enough to smell, to touch, to kiss, and she always wants it, wants it so badly she can taste her own longing. They always end with a knife in Eve's hand, and she wakes up before anything bad can happen, with her heart racing and an ache deep inside her, between her legs. 

The urge will fade by morning, when the sky begins to dawn, but in the dead of the night, she'll bring her hands to her wet, soaked, core, rubbing and stroking in furious desperation, arching herself off the bed, to no avail. Release never comes. No amount of 3am cold showers or long hard jogs in the dead of the night do anything to relieve her agony.

After a full week of this, where she wakes up every single night in torture, she decides this can't go on. 

She has to end this. 

=== 

The next day, she leaves her shift at the fast food joint early, goes home, takes a shower, and changes into something that's comfortable and easy to move in. Pins her hair up, as usual, to keep it out of her face.

There's a loose window around the back of Eve's home. It takes a bit of effort, but it can be jiggled open from the outside. She's done it before, and once the street between their homes are clear, she makes her way to the back of Eve's home and does it again. 

She finds an unobtrusive corner to hide in and waits. In her hand is the spring-assisted knife she purchased from a hunting goods store just outside the city.

She has left herself plenty of time to sit there in the darkness, to repeat the images in her head, over and over. 

A key jangles in the lock. It's time.

===

Eve is saying something.

Villanelle responds, on instinct. She is unprepared for the sight of Eve, so close, not through a window or a door, nothing obstructing her line of vision. It hits her like a punch in the gut. 

The oily, tar-covered pit monster in Villanelle's stomach explodes, sickeningly, in every part of her. 

She wants, she wants, she wants so bad, she is so hungry, she could eat Eve alive, she wants to skin her and peel it off and eat and drink until she is completely sated -

Oh god, she wants to come so badly. 

"Undo my pants," she growls, forcing Eve to the floor and holding the knife by her face. She needs this, first. 

Eve's lips touch her, right there, and it's not enough, it's not NEARLY enough -

God, you're terrible at this, she thinks, and realises she's spoken out loud -

She tells Eve what she wants, what she needs, because she needs, so badly, god she wants -

\- she needs she needs she wants she wants she'll take it's hers it's hers to take Eve is hers all hers all hers all hers she's just taking what's hers -

It's her first orgasm in months. It feels like dying. 

It's too much. She forces herself to concentrate. She has to finish this.

"Do up my pants." Her voice comes out weaker than she intends.

Expose the abdomen. Stick the knife in. Retrieve the knife. Retreat.   
   
Instead, Eve is babbling.

This useless, lifeless husk of a woman, whom Villanelle has witnessed wandering around in a pointless daze for the past month -

\- she is asking if Villanelle would like Eve to clean up Villanelle's still dripping cunt.

She can't think about this right now. About how Eve pointed out how uncomfortable it would be for Villanelle to walk around in soaking wet panties, even after what Villanelle has just done to her. About how after what Villanelle has just done to Eve, there is no visible fear on Eve's face. About how Villanelle is the one with the knife, and Eve is on the ground and - and - and - 

She has to get on with it. Expose the abdomen. Stick the knife in. Retrieve the knife. Retreat. 

Eve does up Villanelle's pants dutifully. Is this the part where you kill me? she says. 

Expose the abdomen. Stick the knife in. Retrieve the knife. Retreat. 

Expose the abdomen. Stick the knife in. Retrieve the knife. Retreat. 

Expose the abdomen. Stick the knife in. Retrieve the knife. Retreat. 

This is the part where Villanelle exposes Eve's abdomen, sticks the knife in, retrieves it, and retreats. 

She can do it. She can. She can. She -

She can't. 

She failed before she even started. Her mistake was thinking that there ever was a chance she would succeed. 

The oily tar, leaking throughout every inch of her body, is on fire. The serpent howls, jaws open wide, snapping uselessly. She has kept it at bay for so long, but now she lets it burn, for the first time in months, and lets all the rage, resentment, frustration, powerlessness, and pain overwhelm her. 

Villanelle grabs Eve by the throat, drags Eve to her feet, puts the entire weight of her rage behind her fist and hits Eve as hard as she can.

She leaves Eve's writhing body on the ground. 

Maybe she can't kill Eve. Not yet. But she sure as hell can hurt her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's interesting trying to commit something to text that has already been in your head for ages but never needed to be fully sequenced out. It's an interesting exercise, too, to write from Villanelle's POV - whatever continuation I intended for this was going to be from her perspective; the issue was figuring out how far back to go. 
> 
> These first two chapters go into a lot of detail in a fairly compressed amount of time; going forward there'll be an attempt to avoid retelling most of the events already told from Eve's POV. There's a risk that "demystifying" Villanelle ends up retroactively messing up something with Eve's side of things, but, hopefully not. 
> 
> Thanks for reading.


	3. Chapter 3

She's running again, her feet pounding against the pavement, her heart thudding in her ears, into unknown directions. 

Apparently this is what she does now. Fail, and run. Like she can escape her truth. Like she can outrun her weakness. Like she can leave it behind.

Instead, her impotence clings to her like an sticky, molten glue - embedded deep within her gut, no matter how hard she tries she can't shake it lose.

It's Eve. It's Eve's fault. It has to be Eve. Eve has done something to her. Killing Eve would solve everything.

And Killing Eve is her actual problem. 

She doesn't know - she's never had to know - what makes her so extraordinary at what she does, at everything she tries. It's always been effortless. It's a gift. She's a natural. 

Now, with her body completely betraying her, she doesn't know how to find what's broken with her. 

In the absence of any better options, she just runs. 

===

Eventually she notices she's hungry, so she veers mindlessly into the first restaurant she sees. Inside, it's warm and colourful and smells of spices.

Without waiting to be seated, she pulls a menu from a stack at the entrance and plops down at a table. A staff member scurries up to her, looking somewhat unimpressed at her sweaty, disheveled appearance. She flips to the back of the menu where all the specials are and draws a single circle around half the dishes on the page with her finger. He looks confused. She redraws the circle; she wants all of them. They politely recommend a few appetizers. She has them all added to her order. They look unconvinced at her ability to finish or even pay for her meal. 

Funny. Condescension and entitlement have always worked for her. If she can't even scare the local ethnic minorities, she's really lost her touch. 

The main dishes take forever to come out, and she idly wonders if she deliberately puts herself in situations where people piss her off enough that she'll eventually snap and manage to kill someone. Unfortunately, the appetizers are all aggravatingly satisfying, so she can't get her rage on properly at the people who recommended them. 

She works her way through a good portion of the food, and by the end of the meal she's much feeling better about things in general. She has all the leftovers packed up (she wasn't actually going to eat it all, she just likes variety, and she's not about to waste any of it) and, as an afterthought, leaves a respectable tip, which turns all the servers' frowns upside down. She might as well make herself amiable if she's going to come back here.

As she leaves the restaurant, she realises where she is, and nearly hurls her takeaway bags into the street in self-disgust. Somehow she's run all the way to where Eve works. This is too much.

She can't let the woman control her life any longer. 

===

One lesson they used to drill into her regards the importance of scripts. Scripts are what makes society functional: everyone has one, and everyone follows them, as standards and guidelines for action. Learn the appropriate scripts, setting, and order of events for every scenario, and you will always belong; learn other people's scripts by heart, and you will become them. Practice, and becoming them will be as natural as breathing. Know the scripts better than anyone else, and you will control every situation.

She's always hated practice, and never bothered because she didn't need to, but when the next day Eve shows up in front of her in the middle of her shift, Villanelle wishes she practiced a little harder.

Smile. Keep talking. Small movements. Maintain control. 

She checked from her window that morning, before leaving for work herself. Eve was going to stay inside, cowering and licking her wounds, too afraid to see the light of day.

She should have realised that this was a potential outcome.  

Villanelle likes this place. Likes fried chicken. Likes how easy it is to be here.

Maybe Eve will just leave. 

She sticks to her script. She's just a local girl from Birmingham, working her shift at Sam's Fried Chicken. An obstinate customer has demanded service! Keep smiling. Be helpful. Be friendly. Keep things under control. 

===

Things have escalated. 

Sharing the same enclosed space inside a moving vehicle headed for a police station, while breathing the same air as the woman she brutalised last night is not how she thought her day would go.

The local contact for the organisation here will probably hear about this, and they'll inform their contact, who'll inform their contact, and so on and so on, until it'll gets back to someone in the organisation that matters. Someone's going to have to pull a few strings. They always made it happen, but that didn't mean they liked it when it did. She was supposed to be on good behaviour. As much as it has chafed at her to do so, she's successfully kept her head down, too, until now. Trust Eve to ruin yet another thing for her. 

She is acutely aware that if she reaches out, Eve is right there, close enough to touch. Part of Villanelle inexplicably, nauseatingly, longs to do so. 

The other, more vocal part of her wants to open the door and jump out of a moving car headlong into traffic. 

Torn between the two impulses pulling her in literally opposite directions, she manages to stay perfectly still for the entire ride to the police precinct. 

===

The police interview itself is fairly standard procedure. She's been through this rodeo before. After a handful of routine questions, a supervisor steps in and all of a sudden she's free to go.

She should leave.

She should go back and finish up her shift. 

She should put as much distance between her and Eve as possible.

She lingers by the exit.

She could stay and find out what Eve told the police. Find out what Eve is capable of, whenever Villanelle decides to get serious. 

She should find out if she can bear to be in the same room as Eve without wanting to run away. 

Her brain continues to supply a myriad of rational, convincing reasons for why she should leave and why she should stay put.

She still hasn't made up her mind by the time Eve shows up and the decision is made for her. 

===

Her thinking is out of order. 

She doesn't have a plan.

She doesn't have a backup plan

She doesn't have a next step planned.

Script.

Script. Stick to the script.

Any script.

Anything will do, Villanelle. 

Villanelle.

Fearless, confident Villanelle. Villanelle, who's always in control. Villanelle, who knows exactly what she's doing.

That script will do. It'll have to do. 

"Come on, Eve. I've been waiting for you. Let's go."

And with surprisingly little persuasion, like a moth to her flame, Eve follows. 

===

This is another lesson she has learnt: conversation is a tennis match. The goal is not always the evisceration of your opponent. The goal, sometimes, is to keep the ball in play, each person getting their turn. Just as a tennis player can deliberately aim the ball placement to direct their opponent to a certain place on the court, an expert conversationalist can guide the flow of the conversation to their liking, keeping their opponent exactly where they want - running back and forth, in circles, on the defensive, or teasing them with what they think is an opening or a weakness, before going in for the finishing blow. 

She has always liked the analogy, keeping the opponent stuck with a big fat œuf.

Right now, on a walk down this dark street, with Eve trailing behind, Villanelle is trying to make sure she's not the one stuck at l'œuf herself.

Eve keeps asking questions. Villanelle has to answer, or she'll drop the ball. 

Go to where the ball has landed. Lob the ball back across.

She's pleased with - relieved at - the distance between them. This feels manageable. 

Keep the ball afloat. Keep the ball in play. 

Eve is trying to talk about last night. 

Instinctively Villanelle goes for an overhead smash. "So that's the part you want to talk about, huh?" If Eve wants to talk about a ruined meal, Villanelle can talk about a ruined meal. If Eve wants to talk about how Villanelle raped her stupid face, Villanelle can talk about rape. 

15-0 to Villanelle. 

The ball is out of play. Neither of them make a move.

That's because it's Villanelle's serve. She has to be the one to restart the conversation. She has to keep Eve engaged. She has to make sure Eve keeps following her. 

She's forgotten why she even wants to keep playing with Eve to begin with. 

Eve's stomach rumbles.

It's an opening. Vilanelle tosses an easy serve across the court. Invites her to dinner. 

The ball remains suspended in the air, uneasily, for the remainder of the walk. 

Villanelle relaxes once she is back in her element, playing the role of eager fried chicken store worker. 

Turn on the lights. Pre-heat the oil. Prepare the batter. Bread the chicken. Dip the chicken into the fryer. Remove a bag of fries from freezer. Dump the fries into the fryer.

Fries are awesome. 

The script helps with the tennis.

Villanelle knows she's not hitting all the balls back. Some of them, she just sort of lets them go right by her shoulder. That doesn't mean Eve's rewarded the point, though.  Eve doesn't realise she's playing tennis, anyway, so as far as Villanelle's concerned it's still l'œuf for Eve and, oh, first set 4-0 or whatever for Villanelle.

Plate the chicken. Add the fries. Ask if the customer wants salad. Add the salad.

Follow the script. Serve the meal. 

Villanelle's hungry. She's ready to eat. She tells Eve to sit down. 

Eve does. Game, set to Villanelle, 1-0.

Next set, 0-0. Eve's serve. 

===

As dinner conversations go, it's fairly successful - pleasant, even. Villanelle has managed to keep the conversation going for quite a while now, and Eve seems content to keep the rally going. Villanelle finds herself relaxing into her chair, and for a minute, forgets what script she's supposed to be following. 

It's the first meal she's shared with someone in months. 

In fact, if she's being honest with herself, this is the first proper conversation she's had with someone for months, where she's just simply been herself. 

It's only partway through the meal that Villanelle realises she's over-eagerly and unintentionally shared her level of familiarity with the local area. Normally, the less you reveal to your opponent, the more the balance of power stays in your court, but too late Villanelle realises she's been running at the mouth. It's a bad habit from before, that whenever there's someone that Villanelle wants to impress, she'll preen at how much she knows, showing off like a peacock. She only ever catches herself doing it after the fact, and she's never had cause to regret this behaviour, but there's no logical reason for her to want to impress Eve, so it's ridiculous that she's showed her hand like this so early. 

It's definitely keeping Eve on her toes, off-balance, at least, knowing that Villanelle knows more than Eve does. So there's that.

"So, uh, what was the point of all this, anyway?" Eve asks. She seems determined to force the conversation to a fast end. 

Now it's Villanelle who is on her toes. She lobs the ball back, warily. 

Eve knocks the ball back, long, over and over again, as Villanelle tries to keep up and make it look effortless.

Eve volleys a lightning-fast forehand over the net. "Are you fucking with me? Are you just toying with me now? Having fun watching me squirm and try to get answers out of you?"

Oh, it's the perfect shot. Villanelle can see so clearly now.

She slams the ball back with equal force. "Yes. That is exactly why I am here." 

She feels more in control of the conversation now. She can direct where it flows. She can keep Eve on the defensive.  

She's a threat. A threat to Eve. A threat to those she loves. She needs to keep reminding everyone of that.

Eve owes Villanelle. Eve has wronged Villanelle. Of this there is no question. 

This is her script. This is what it means to be Villanelle. She should have been doing this from the beginning. 

She's lost track of the points, but whatever, Eve is on the ropes, Villanelle has won all the sets and it's the final game 40-0 to Villanelle. She's about to go in for the finishing blow when Eve asks:  

"Why haven't you killed anyone?"

It literally stops Villanelle dead in her tracks.

So Eve ends up breaking that œuf after all. 

And when Eve looks up, to Villanelle's chagrin, they both know it at the same time. 

But Villanelle hasn't lost entirely. Eve would never guess at Villanelle's weakness, not in a million years. Villanelle isn't about to give it away. 

Fuck the tennis match. Villanelle issues a calibrated threat designed to send Eve away scurrying in fear. It works.

===

So then. 

Her problem isn't just that she can't get it up for killing people. Her problem is now compounded by the fact that her logical brain genuinely seems to stop functioning properly around Eve. She isn't able to think fast enough, or maybe she isn't thinking at all. The multiple pathways in every situation that used to emerge so clearly before her eyes now stay hidden. 

To say Eve has majorly fucked her up is an understatement. 

But she's not completely helpless against Eve. She just needs the right script to follow. It's not just enough to know and rehearse the physical moves by hand.

She has to relearn and embody what it means to be Villanelle again - the Villanelle that is fearless, cocky, inconsiderate, brash, and most importantly, takes action without hesitation. 

If Eve weakens her, then Villanelle just needs to cut Eve out of her life and go back to how she was before. Before any of this. Before that first meeting in the bathroom. Before Eve ever entered her life. When everything was simple to her, and everything was fun. 

Fun. She hasn't had that in a while. She's never properly lived in England before. She might as well make the most of it and see what it's like. 

=== 

Sometimes she forgets that being Villanelle is a somewhat expensive endeavour. At any rate, Birmingham is not exactly brimming with high fashion choices, and she can't really afford it on her salary right now anyway.

Indulging in her other passion, food, is less of a problem. She enjoys fine cuisine as much as the next sophisticated girl, but honestly she'll eat anything, and Birmingham has a ton of food. She makes sure to hit up every Indian or Balti restaurant she sees. She's developed quite a hankering for it, and for some reason it just feels like comfort food. 

She takes precautions to make sure she doesn't run into Eve, at all, avoiding all Eve's usual locations (making a sole exception for the curry house near Eve's workplace - nothing else quite matches up to that first night she had it for some reason, and plus they seem to really appreciate her business as a regular now), and leaving instructions for her coworkers that will alert her whenever Eve might show up. It's a timely move, since Eve seems to be very interested in tracking down Villanelle's whereabouts at the moment. Villanelle isn't pleased with this turn of events, but the point is to ignore Eve completely, and so she does.

In her spare time off work, instead of spending every waking minute following Eve and checking up on Eve and thinking about Eve, she decides to be a tourist in the city instead. She visits old houses and estates (they're elegant enough, but she prefers places where she doesn't have to be on her best behaviour all the time). She sees movies at the cinema (it would be cheaper watching at her place, but she doesn't own a TV). She visits the zoo (she imagines jumping into the cages and taking on all the animals barehanded.) She visits the art museum (she learns all about the city's middling history and enjoys pretending to understand the art). She visits the Jewellery Quarter (she manages to pilfer a few pieces under various craftmens' noses, proving she's still got it.) She tolerates the botanical gardens (flowers, sure, but the bugs, not so much.) She sees the aquarium (she imagines how tasty all the fish and sharks would taste.) 

But by FAR her favourite place is the living history museum a little ways from the city. The old shops. The iron forges. The old fairground. The village shops. The food. The old vehicle rides. All the people dressed up, pretending to be from older times. 

It. Is. So. Much. Fun.

The only thing she hates are all the other people visiting. They detract from the whole experience. She imagines killing all of them so she can have the whole museum to herself. 

Villanelle goes back whenever she can since her ticket gives her unlimited admission for the whole year. It gives her a lot of practice imagining killing people.

It's on one such visit, delightfully engrossed in a sweets-making demonstration and then rudely blocked by a middle-aged female tourist with great hair, that she realises that she feels up to killing Eve again. She'll go tonight. It'll be fun.

===

Villanelle decides to break into Eve's house in a flashier way, this time - she's done climbing through windows. The puny back door lock is no match for her and her trusty knife skills.

She's a little bummed out to find that Eve is not immediately alerted to her entrance. The running water upstairs indicates Eve's current location.

She looks around. Everything looks the same as it did the last time she was here. It's going to look the same after Eve dies tonight. 

Slowly, she makes her way upstairs, waiting for the bathroom water to stop running before announcing her presence. 

She almost cracks up at the look on Eve's face. Almost. She makes sure Eve sees the knife in her hand. 

Villanelle might as well enjoy herself before the end. 

"You know what to do." She keeps her eyes trained on Eve's face, so she'll know Eve's next thought and move.

But Eve doesn't move. Maybe she's in a defiant mood.

"You need me to say it? Fine. Get on your knees."

And, _oh_. Eve obeys. Just like that. Without any hesitation. It does something strange to Villanelle's core. 

Maybe Eve was waiting for instructions. 

Except, no, Eve tries to undo Villanelle's pants without being told, the same time Villanelle reaches for them. 

Eve is not acting the way she should. It's confusing her. 

But Villanelle's hands are still burning from when they touched. 

The want flares up in her, unbidden.

"Get on with it," Villanelle says, then repeats, and -

Villanelle nearly falls over at the feeling of Eve's mouth on her cunt. 

This isn't just clumsy fumbling, extracted under duress. This is a tender greeting, a curious exploration, a sincere offering. A declaration of intent.

"Did some research online, did you?" Villanelle acknowledges grudgingly. Eve has no right to be this cocky. "You need a lot more practice."

Eve bites back, literally. 

It takes all of Villanelle's self-control to not make a sound, and still a small one escapes, to her utter dismay. 

This isn't what she thought would happen. 

She came tonight to have fun, but not like this. Not this, trembling and barely able to stay upright, Eve's mouth giving her so much attention and care, and Villanelle just letting her do this - this, whatever Eve is doing, Eve is just doing whatever she wants, and - this isn't what this is about, Eve has no right, no right after everything that's happened - Villanelle should stop this right now -

Villanelle feels so, so good, and somehow she's not enjoying herself at all.

Someone is humming. No, it's not that, it's more of a low, guttural groan, that goes on and on and - 

It's Eve. Eve is the one making the sound. Eve is the one enjoying herself. 

This isn't right. None of this is right. 

Villanelle has to end this, right now.

She has to get out of here. She can't do this anymore, but she can't stop, oh, fuck, no, she can't just stop and walk away from what's hers, not when she's so close, just on the brink, oh god it's so soft the hair the mouth the lips the tongue doing what she wants giving her what she wants, all hers, fuck -

The sound of Eve's moaning is still echoing in her ears when she finally regains her senses.

She wants to hurt Eve so badly for doing this to her. She tries to. She really does.

It's strange how the more nakedly vulnerable Eve is, the harder a time Villanelle has causing damage to her. She wants to step on Eve's windpipe and crush her skull beneath her. She wants to rip all that glorious hair out of that skull.

All she's capable of doing is hitting Eve just hard enough to immobilise her so that Villanelle can't be followed. 

Villanelle can't run from this, although she's still going to try. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So much for trying to speed through this. Jeebus crikey.
> 
> Thank you for your patience and for reading this.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning, for a suggestion of self harm. Also, the usual level of violence and stuff.

Eve completely fucks with Villanelle's internal workings. This much has been obvious so far. 

The extent of the damage to her is still unclear. 

Right now, her thoughts are all over the place, and she can't reign them under control. She paces circles around her tiny apartment, hands on her head, doing nothing to block the thoughts out. 

This is unfair. 

Eve should not be enjoying herself. Not for a second. Not when Villanelle can't. 

Eve, on her knees, her mouth doing all manner of unspeakable things to her, divine things -

Eve's back door is damaged. It's unlocked. Anyone could just walk in through the back. This isn't a safe neighbourhood.

Eve's not safe.

Eve's not safe from Villanelle. But Eve's not afraid of Villanelle. Even when she should be. 

Eve, on her knees, staring straight up into Villanelle's eyes, her own gaze resolute, steady, unwavering -

Villanelle can't kill Eve. 

Villanelle needs to kill Eve.

Villanelle needs to be the one to kill Eve. 

Someone else will get to Eve if her back door's left unlocked like that.

Fuck the back door. The back door is irrelevant. 

Villanelle should set Eve's house on fire. Douse the whole place in gasoline, stay outside, and light a match. No need for any face-to-face. She'll have to make sure Eve stays inside, though. Eve can be tied up.

Villanelle can tie Eve up. 

Eve, tied up, on her back, unable to move, unable to do anything, helpless against Villanelle kneeling over her head, pressing her cunt to Eve's face -

Villanelle caves. She undoes her pants, jerks them down, and ruts against her own hands, desperately in search of relief. She slams her forehead against a wall partly from despair, and partly to keep herself from falling over.

Eve. Fucking Eve.

Eve enjoyed it. Eve moaned. Eve looked into her eyes, and tried to guess what would please Villanelle, and then tried to please her.

Maybe it doesn't have to be wrong. Maybe Eve is trying, in her own way, to make things okay. Maybe Eve is okay with the way things are. Maybe Villanelle can be, too. 

Fuck, fuck, fuck, Eve.

===

She doesn't sleep a wink all night. 

When dawn breaks, the one action item she manages to take away from her sleepless night is: Eve's lock needs to be replaced. 

Villanelle might as well be the one to do it. She has a lot of practice breaking locks, but the chance to repair them doesn't come up often, so she spends a couple of hours scouring videos online for lock-replacing tutorials, because she couldn't sleep anyway. 

It's not that she particularly needs to see Eve, or share the same space with her, or breathe the same air as her, or anything like that. Now that she's looked up how to replace a lock, it would be a waste not to do it. 

She's peering out her window at Eve's front door to make sure she's not leaving her house, idly wondering what the cheapest way to secure a set of locksmith's tools would be, when it occurs to her that Eve might be trying to get her lock repaired today as well. Sure enough, some time later, a vehicle clearly marked SMITH'S LOCKSMITHS rolls down the road, looking for a place to park. She's down the stairs and by the car just as it pulls into an empty spot beside the 

In a few seconds, she's deduced that the man has a family (wife? daughter?) and makes up a story on the spot about how her niece has been trapped by something heavy nearby, a dumpster or something, and could he please come and help, and she manages to fool him long enough to lead him to nearby and render him unconscious with a choke hold. She looks at his prone body, briefly considers trying to kill him, and decides that even if she doesn't fail, it's not worth the hassle of dealing with a body right now. She has a lock to fix.

She digs his car keys from his pocket, retrieves the man's toolkit and parts, and strolls up to Eve's front door. 

What's the proper script for a locksmith? She'll just have to make it up as she goes. 

===

Eve seems unhappy to see her, judging by the way she slams the door shut in Villanelle's face. Understandable.

She waits for a while outside, deciding what her next steps will be, when she hears Eve making a phone call. A little more patience, and Eve lets her in. 

Villanelle plays her part perfectly. She's just a friendly, neighbourhood locksmith, here to be helpful, while also being vaguely threatening, in case anyone gets any funny ideas. 

Villanelle gets to work. Eve keeps trying to talk to her, and she bats the conversation back accordingly, her mind focused on the door lock. She might as well do a proper job of it. It looks pretty straightforward, but she doesn't want to make a mistake and risk looking stupid though. Eve will smell the weakness on her. 

For some reason, she's feeling inordinately pleased at things. It can't be from being in such close proximity to Eve, close enough to smell her shampoo and body soap, because that would make no sense at all. It must be because Eve is so visibly unhappy at her.

Or maybe it's just because Eve actually seems marginally impressed at what Villanelle's capable of doing. It's not like Villanelle is trying to impress her or anything like that. She can't help if she's simply so good at everything she tries. With the exception of killing people, apparently, but that's just a slump she's going through. 

Eve offers her tea. Villanelle accepts.

This is good. This is nice. This is okay.

Maybe things can be like this. Normal. 

That's the thought swirling around her head when Eve brings her a mug of tea. It's big. It looks like Eve wants to keep her talking. 

Sure enough, Eve is doing that thing where she pretends she's not asking any prying questions but she totally is. Villanelle finds herself answering them in spite of herself. 

She's giving too much away again. She can't afford that.

She could lie. But she doesn't feel like lying. 

It's just been so long since someone's asked Villanelle a question about herself - Villanelle, not someone that she's pretending to be. 

It was a long night. Maybe she's just tired. Tired of her incompetence. Tired of feeling inadequate. Tired of - being someone she's failing to be, anymore.

Eve is asking her what she likes so much about it here, as if unwilling to believe Villanelle, or anyone would actually come to like this place. She really seems to have a personal grudge against this city. Villanelle isn't sure where this animosity comes from. Maybe it's a local thing.

But maybe Eve has a point. Maybe it's not really this city that Villanelle likes so much. Maybe it's just the things she's found here. The things that have meaning to her.

Maybe Eve will understand if Villanelle tells her that Eve herself is something that makes this place meaningful.

There is a pause as Villanelle waits for Eve to digest the information, and then -

"I put poison in your tea."

That's no fucking conversation tennis ball, no, damn it all to hell, that's a knife thrown at her head, it's a fucking knife in Eve's hand and she's come straight at Villanelle with it, right while Villanelle is open and least expecting it, right when Villanelle is vulnerable -

How the fuck did she forget? When did Villanelle become so complacent? She's fooled herself into thinking that just because Eve has been walking around like a dead woman that she already was. Eve isn't some nobody, she's a venomous viper, hiding her fangs in plain sight, hiding knives up her sleeves, waiting for a chance to strike. 

Someone this dangerous can't be allowed to live. 

Someone this dangerous to her can't be allowed to live.

Villanelle has advanced on Eve before she is even aware of what she's doing. 

Eve is shouting something at her, desperately - she's not serious, she didn't mean it, she did it, just to fuck with Villanelle, just because she could, because that's what Eve does, that's all Eve does, she exists just to fuck with Villanelle -

God, if Villanelle's going to do it, it's got to be now, it HAS to be NOW, she can't wait any longer, Villanelle isn't safe as long as Eve is alive - 

Expose the abdomen. Stick the knife in. Retrieve the knife. Retreat.

She knows she's going to fail, even before she tries.

Useless. Pathetic. Fucking failure. Waste of space. 

Eve is shouting something at her. Not the stomach, she says? Fuck Eve, fuck Eve to hell and back, fuck Eve in the stupid face.

Villanelle rears back and lets a right hook fly. There's a satisfying crunch as Eve falls to the floor.

So, Villanelle can change a lock, and throw a mean punch to someone's face. She can run real fast too.

She just can't kill the biggest threat in her life. 

===

She can't eat. She can't sleep.

In her room, she curls up on her thin mattress, hugging her knees to her chest, and rocks herself back and forth.

It hasn't been this bad in years.

Here's a lesson: ignoring the truth before you, instead of accepting reality as it is, is the fastest path to guaranteed failure. If something has gone wrong, there's no point in pretending everything is fine. Adjust. Adapt. Go to Plan B. And if you don't have a plan B, or plan C, you're already fucked, because you should always have a contingency plan. 

Villanelle has no contingency plan. Fuck, she never even had a plan to start with.

"Killing Eve." That wasn't a plan. It was nothing more than a prayer. 

She has no idea what she's doing here, not since the very beginning. That's the truth. 

Here's another: in a world of nobodies, Villanelle is the top of the food chain. She makes the world bow to her. She feels no fear. She has no weaknesses.

But she's weak to Eve. Eve, pathetic, useless, boring, mundane Eve is her fucking weakness. Eve is what makes her weak. Eve is what happens when you let yourself think, even for a second, that you are safe. 

The truth is that simple. 

The truth is overwhelming.

Villanelle imagines jumping from her window. Walking out into traffic, into an oncoming car. Facing down the barrel of the gun, about to go off. None of it gives her pause. 

_"I put poison in your tea."_

Her heart rate spikes, and she nearly gags. She's not afraid. She's NOT afraid.

This can't be fear. She's not capable of fear. Everyone keeps telling her that. She's known it her whole life. 

She should be able to look Eve in the eye, let her die, step over her lifeless body, and move on, without a backwards glance.

She's done it to people she's loved, before. But Villanelle didn't have to pull the trigger herself. Anna did it for her. So she'll never know what she's capable of. 

She swore to herself, years ago, that this would never happen again - letting herself get attached, letting her heart grow fond, and weak. 

Maybe this has been inside her all along. An inability to kill those she might love and return that love. She just destroys them, slowly, from the inside, until they're completely ruined beyond recognition.  

And there Eve is, acting like she hasn't been ruined.

Eve isn't Anna. Eve is nothing like Anna was.

No.

Eve is everything that Villanelle looked for in Anna and didn't find. 

No.

Eve is - Eve is - 

Eve is a crack in Villanelle's armour. A grain of sand in her wound. A black, oily pit of tar oozing inside her, clogging up her veins and arteries and nerves. When Villanelle healed, part of Eve was buried inside her, somewhere, and that's why the wound didn't close properly, because Eve was right there, getting in the way. 

Eve is in her gut. Eve is under her skin.

Villanelle's knife is in her hand. Maybe she can cut it out of her. Just a small hole, just where her scar is, let it slowly seep out from inside her.

The blade is cold on her skin. Villanelle breathes out, slowly, feeling the blade heat up with her body temperature. 

This is ridiculous. She's not going to stick a fucking knife inside her gut. There's no point in finishing for Eve what she started. 

Villanelle's just being dramatic. 

This is all just in her head. Just in her head.

She folds her knife up and tosses it far away from her.

It's dark outside already. She hasn't eaten all day. 

She checks her phone and notices a bunch of missed texts. Right. She was supposed to go to work today. Instead she's missed all of her shifts without any explanation. She's probably going to have to go job hunting again, which is a pain, because two places were eateries and it's a shame to lose out on the free food.

Instead, some texts ask if everything's okay, and to let them know ahead of time next time if she can't make it in. There is one from a irate coworker who has "covered for her so she owes him." The Chinese place has fired her. Whatever, assholes. There's another one a couple blocks in the other direction. 

She'll go back to work tomorrow. It'll be good to get out of her apartment, give her something mindless to focus on.

It'll stop her from feeling so sorry for herself. 

===

It's not a good week for her. The one after that isn't so great, either. 

She's on edge, all the time. She manages to go through the motions every day, dutifully going to work, earning her due. The mindless banality of manual labour and day-to-day life, something she has managed to endure up until now as a necessary cost of being here, now begins to grate. Maintaining the public facade that allow people to see as friendly and nonthreatening and normal, which she has always effortlessly delighted in - exercising her her superiority over those around her - used to come easily to her. Now it's just draining. 

The simple pleasures she found before now bring diminishing returns. For an hour or two she can distract herself, strolling through parks, experiencing the sights and sounds and smells of animals and nature, staring at a painting on a wall and just disappearing into it - but eventually she always must return back to her apartment, the pressure of the house diagonally across the street a constant reminder of her failings. 

Meanwhile, Eve seems to be taunting Villanelle with a newfound vigour that has gone unobserved in her until now. Almost every morning, Eve is out of the apartment before Villanelle rouses herself; Villanelle wouldn't even know where she might have gone if not for the glimpses she catches of Eve returning to her front door after what must be a a brisk jog around the neighbourhood. Tailing her to work, observing her through occasional glimpses of her office windows, she no longer resembles the zombie in the beginning that Villanelle observed merely wading through existence. It's like she's found some kind of backbone or something. 

Villanelle supposes she can't let this go on for too long. Let Eve regain too much footing, and she will be harder to wipe out later on. The problem is, she has no idea what her next step should be. If she doesn't kill Eve, she can't get back to her old life, and then what? 

She doesn't even want to contemplate. The solution has to come to her eventually.  

In the meantime, Villanelle just has to grind through, one day at a time.

In the meantime, Eve's steps seem to get firmer, her expression a little brighter, every day. She's even replaced all those takeaway bags with proper groceries for dinner instead.

For crying out loud, first the running, then the diet change. She must be on a fucking wellness bender or some bullshit like that. 

It's in the middle of a particularly long and gloomy shift at the fried chicken joint that Villanelle decides she needs to pay Eve a visit that night. She's beyond infuriated, mulling over how Eve's abandonment of fast food and restaurant cooking is an affront to fast food and restaurant workers everywhere. They need income too, and food is food, and Eve trying to eat healthy is just stupid. 

It's not that this is the first time Villanelle has found an excuse to silently rage at Eve in her head over the past few weeks. This is just the one thing that finally tips her over the edge.  

She needs to see Eve pay. She needs to see Eve suffer.

She needs to see Eve.

She really doesn't have much of a plan beyond that.

===

The first thing she notices when she approaches Eve's back door, her spring knife at the ready, is that the door is unlocked.

Fucking hell. After the effort she went to fixing the bloody thing, to make sure someone doesn't break in and rape Eve in the middle of the night, or something. The damn woman can't even remember to lock it?

The second thing she notices is the smell of food cooking as she rounds the kitchen wall.

The third thing she notices is the chef knife in Eve's hands. 

Her eyes follow it around the room, barely taking in the table set for two; a pie, steaming hot, on the table. It's too big for one person. Is that meant for her? 

She wants to say something flippant, dismissive.

She can't move. She can't breathe. Her heartbeat is a typhoon in her ears. 

This isn't happening. This can't be happening. This isn't her, frozen, hypnotised with - with - with whatever spell Eve has cast on her - 

The knife moves abruptly, and she flinches. Shit. 

Maybe Eve didn't see that.

The chef knife moves, again, and this time her feet betray her as she stumbles backwards. 

Eve definitely saw that.

Villanelle must move. She must stand her ground. She must run. She must fight. She must get out of there.

Instead, she remains rooted in place, only capable of watching as Eve cleans the knife off and puts it down.

"We don't have to eat if you don't feel like it," Eve tells Villanelle. "If you feel like doing something else."

For a second, Villanelle doesn't understand, and then she understands all too well. 

Eve thinks she knows what Villanelle has come for. And Eve wants to give it to her. Because Eve - because Eve enjoyed it. Because Eve wants to enjoy it again. 

A jolt of lightning pierces right through Villanelle, from the top of her head all the way down to her feet and everything in between.

If only Eve knew. If only Eve knew what Villanelle really came here to accomplish; how much torment she's caused Villanelle over the past few weeks - no, months, since Paris. She wants to shout the truth into Eve's face, watch it crumple in mortification, and fear, and despair. She can't afford to reveal her hand, though, not right now. Not while she's still this weak. 

And, oh, the wanting of her body cries out, the same wanting that has plagued her every single night since she's arrived in Birmingham - no, since Paris - no, from the very beginning, since London, from the very first time she laid eyes on Eve - waxing and waning, but constantly there, whether Villanelle has been willing to admit its existence or not.

There is a lot she doesn't know right now, but she's fairly certain two things are going to happen again. The first is that she is going to leave here with Eve still alive. She might as well let the second - she's going to get off on Eve's face - happen as well.

She decides to tell Eve a joke of her own, see how much Eve likes it. She gestures to the pie. "You have to eat all of it so I can find out if you poisoned it or not."

She's pretty sure Eve found that about as funny as Villanelle did.

And yet, against all of Villanelle's expectations, Eve holds a hand up, as if she can actually stop Villanelle with just an outstretched hand. And is trying to NEGOTIATE.

Eve is really full of surprises tonight. 

Villanelle musters what dignity she can, and makes her threat as plain as possible. "None of this is for your benefit. None of this is for your enjoyment. Do not think for a second that I can't - or won't - kill you." Eve doesn't have to know that last part's not entirely true. 

Eve falls silent. And then she says, quietly, "I have never, ever forgotten, nor doubted, not for a single moment, that you are capable of killing me. I never forget the danger I'm in when I'm with you."

Eve has no idea how much -

No, Villanelle has no idea how much she has needed to hear that. Like two overlapping circles, out of focus, have suddenly snapped back into view.

And then Eve continues, with a look in her eyes so intense that Villanelle nearly takes another step back -

"But do not for a second think that you can dictate what I do and don't enjoy."

_Oh._

How dare she. Villanelle wants to wipe that look off Eve's face. She wants to pound Eve into the ground, feel Eve quaking in fear below her.

Villanelle wants Eve's mouth on her as soon as possible. 

She struggles to regain the upper hand. Reminds Eve of what Villanelle could still do to her. Painful things.  

Eve's visible fear makes Villanelle feel slightly safer. 

She feels ready now.

"Get on your knees."

Before all the words are out, Eve has fallen to the ground, her face tilted upwards, her expression one of - relief, gratitude, yearning - Villanelle can't tell, but it makes her stomach clench. Villanelle's own feelings, written all over Eve's face, reflected back at her. 

She wants to speak, make a demand - but the words get stuck in her throat. She lets Eve scrabble with her pants, expose her intimate parts to the air.

How far would Eve go? How far would Villanelle allow her go? Would she let Eve do anything to her right now? Would Villanelle stop her? Could Villanelle stop her?

Did Villanelle want to stop her?

But Eve is not going further, seemingly content to lavish all her attention on the sensitive nexus between Villanelle's legs. Like it's all that matters. Like it's all Eve needs.

Where is this even coming from? Is Eve responding to Villanelle's own wanting? Has the same wanting been inside Eve all along, somehow not yet extinguished by everything Villanelle has done?

The build up is too fast, too sudden, flaring all through her limbs, to her fingertips, to her toes, behind her eyeballs.

Villanelle so, so hungry. 

This isn't enough. This isn't nearly enough. 

She reaches out, grabs, pulls upwards, and there they are, face to face - Villanelle wants to run, it's too close, it's too soon - and Eve looks so confused, and half-blind, and indignant, like a puppy that doesn't understand why it has just been pulled away from its favourite toy, and god, what a stupid-looking face, but it's this stupid face that is capable of bringing Villanelle so much pleasure, and it's this stupid face that Villanelle has been wanting, for so, so, so, so long now. 

That face, that mouth, those lips, that tongue - hers, all hers. 

She feasts. She devours. She inhales. She loses track of time. 

She wants to swallow Eve whole. 

She stumbles backwards, as Eve pushes her away. 

She wasn't done yet. But the look in Eve's eyes keeps her back. 

"Well? How are you going to hurt me this time?"

Ah, right. Villanelle forgot what their relationship is for a second. Of course Eve wouldn't. Of course Eve couldn't. 

"Are you going to punch me again? In the stomach? In the face? Are you going to use your knife? Where?"

Fair questions. Reasonable questions. Villanelle doesn't know the answers. 

The questions keep coming.

Tennis.

Script.

Something. Something.

"Why are you doing this?" 

She's numb. 

She needs to do something. 

She wiggles her toes. Her feet still work. 

"What do you want?" 

She turns and walks out of there.

Eve is chasing her, and Villanelle suddenly remembers she still has a knife in her hand and she can still use it. 

Eve needs to back off. Eve needs to back the fuck OFF.

Eve backs off. But now she seems pissed off. She stomps away, and Villanelle hears the sound of eating from the next room. 

Villanelle should go. The door is right behind her. 

Eve is just in the next room. 

The kitchen was warm, from all the cooking. The smell of fish and cheese was everywhere. 

There's a single dim light bulb in her apartment that barely illuminates the room. 

She's stuck in place again. She needs to make up her fucking mind already.

Eve probably knows she's still here. It's a fucking disgrace. She needs to cut her fucking losses and just leave. 

Eve is done eating. In a few minutes, she's going to go upstairs, head to bed, and see Villanelle still standing here, in a darkened hallway, like the biggest loser of all time. 

And the biggest loser of all time still hasn't moved, almost like she wants to be caught.

Eve has holed up in the living room. 

Villanelle should really go. She has work in the morning. She's probably going to need to pee really badly pretty soon.

Eve made a lot of pie. Definitely enough for two. 

Villanelle hasn't had dinner yet. 

She takes a tentative step forward. And then another. 

She peers around the corner. Eve has fallen asleep on the couch.

Villanelle holds her breath, waiting to see if Eve is pretending. She steps quietly, deliberately towards her prone body. Eve doesn't stir.

This is the moment. This is the time to finish what Villanelle came here to do. There Eve is, completely defenseless, no knife in her hands, unable to talk back or fight back or do anything to stop Villanelle from delivering the final blow.

If Villanelle can't do it now, she'll never be able to do it.

She'll never be able to go back to her old life, of fashion and indulgence and chaos and lawlessness and freedom, freedom from capitalism and rules and regulations and borders and hunger. The organisation will never trust her again; if she's lucky, they'll deem her too worthless to exterminate. That's her best case scenario.

And then maybe she can eek out a meagre existence here, working irregular shifts, doing mind-numbing menial labour, all for barely enough money to live on, sleeping each night half a block away from a woman who has Villanelle completely in her thrall and doesn't even know it.

It'll be so quick. Stick the knife in. Retrieve the knife. Retreat.

Villanelle makes up her mind.

She folds up the knife slowly, slides it into her pocket, turns around, and walks away from Eve. 

Her eyes catch a glimpse of the half-eaten pie on the dinner table.

If this is going to be her life from now, she damn well better start taking free food wherever she can get it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am this going to exceed the word count for what it was originally based on? GRRRAAAAH.
> 
> Meanwhile I have at least 3 continuations I have in my head (not including the one to this story) AND another dinky thing percolating in my brain, Villanelle why must you be SO MESSED UP, grumble.


	5. Chapter 5

Once she's back in her apartment, Villanelle reheats Eve's pie on the stove. She chews it slowly, bite after bite.

If she keels over from assassination by food poisoning, as last meals go, it's pretty unsatisfying. 

After the day she's had - after the week she's had - it's exactly what she needs. 

She makes it last, portioning out just enough for herself for dinner to stretch it out for a couple of days, and when she's done she scrubs the dish out thoroughly, making sure every last trace of stuck cheese is removed.

She has no idea what she's doing, so she might as well do it as well as she can. It's the only way she can feel like she still has any kind of control over anything at all. 

She makes sure to leave a thank you note for Eve when she returns the dish to her door step. It takes her a couple of tries to strike the right tone, to make sure to maintain the right level of distance - she doesn't want Eve to get the wrong idea. She leaves an "xx" at the end just so Eve knows it's from her.

===

Beyond considering people's motivations to understand them so that she may better kill them, Villanelle doesn't spend much time caring why people do the things they do at all. 

So it is a foreign position for her to be in to wonder what Eve actually thinks about all this as she goes about her days. 

A lesson: people are generally quite predictable, until they are not. Predictably, they become unpredictable under specific situations, where stress, arousal, tension, and emotion run high. 

These circumstances are what Eve has been subjected to in every recent encounter Villanelle has had with her.

Not only does Villanelle have to consider what Eve is thinking, she has to account for the possibility that Eve's actions may not line up with her inner thoughts.

This is why it's so tiresome to be around people for an extended period of time. 

She gets tired of thinking about it after the third day of attempting to decipher Eve's possible thoughts and wants and motivations and actions and feelings. All it's done is make her bored, annoyed, vaguely horny, and awoken in her an overwhelming urge to see Eve again.

She shows up, unannounced, through her back door (again) which is unlocked (again) so Eve must be expecting her (again) even though she never shows up so quickly this soon after. When she enters, though, Eve is unaware of her presence, leaning against her kitchen counter, scrolling distractedly through her phone. When she looks up, she looks surprised, as if she didn't expect to see Villanelle there. For a moment, they simply stare at each other, neither making a move. 

Villanelle has always come to Eve with something in mind, but right now, beyond the vague feeling of _want_ driving her, she has no sense of what her next action is at all. 

She wants Eve to do things to her.

She wants to lecture Eve regarding home security and best practices.

She wants to do things to Eve.

She wants to crawl inside Eve's skin and take up residence there. 

Before she can open her mouth or do any of those things, though, Eve drops to her knees, slack-jawed.

It is incorrect to say, that of all the possible scenarios Villanelle calculated that she might walk into, that this was completely unpredicted, but after the way she and Eve last parted, though, this ranked fairly low in the realm of possibility.

"Chicken's still in the oven. Probably going to be another twenty minutes," Eve says, as if that explains everything. 

The sight of Eve on her knees, as usual, does things to Villanelle's insides. 

Is this Eve's way of saying she doesn't mind what's going to happen? That she wants it to happen?

Is this Eve's way of indicating that Villanelle is going to make it happen anyway, so they might as well get on with it, and get it over with?

Villanelle isn't sure what Eve wants, and she doesn't care.

She doesn't want to care. 

All she wants is an answer to the want inside her, without regard for consequences. 

She doesn't want to consider what her boundaries are, what she is permitted to do, what line she may walk up to, and why she even thinks for a second that the line applies to her. 

Villanelle reaches for the fastening of her pants at the same time Eve extends her hands towards Villanelle's hips. Without thinking, Villanelle closes the necessary distance to allow Eve to undo it for her, ghosting her fingers over Eve's wrists as Eve's hands move. Without a knife in her hands, both are now free to do such things. She regrets it instantly.

When Eve tries to angle her head to look up at Villanelle's face, Villanelle grips Eve by the hair, forcing her to keep her head bowed, in a manner she hopes is painful. She cannot trust the face she is making right now, and she can't risk anyone seeing it.

Keeping her knife in her back pocket leaves both Villanelle's hands free to touch Eve's scalp, to feel those wild tresses with her finger pads. She determines then and there she doesn't need the knife to keep Eve in line.

Eve is thorough, detailed, and thoughtful as usual, and Villanelle scrunches her eyes shut, thinking of the woods at night, of an unhurried lake surface, of the way the low-setting sun gleams off the dashboard on a highway, anything to calm the fevered want, anything to make it last.

She comes calmly and gradually, and Eve keeps the tempo, easing her through it, and when it gets too much, and Villanelle still hasn't had enough of the feel of Eve's mouth, she pulls Eve to her and kisses her languidly, enjoying the sensation of the warmth and wetness of her own taste on Eve's mouth, the softness of Eve's tongue, the inside of Eve's cheek. She tugs, gently, at Eve's hair, and then forcefully, jerking Eve's head to one side, exposing the length of Eve's jaw and her neck and -

_Ding_ , goes the oven.

Villanelle jumps back and does her pants up hastily, suddenly very interested getting the oven door open, as if she has been waiting for the chicken to be ready this entire time.

Eve smooths her hair down, wipes her mouth off with the back of her hand, and silently watches as Villanelle stares at the open oven like it is an enemy determined to foil her. Finally, Eve holds out a pair of oven mitts.

Wordlessly, Villanelle grabs the mitts and dons them, and removes the tray of herb-roasted chicken thighs with potatoes and onions. 

Now she is standing in Eve's kitchen, holding a tray of roast chicken, and debating what to do next. It's almost like this take-things-one-step-at-a-time-and-see-where-it-gets-you approach is not quite working out for her. 

Eve picks up a plate and fork from the table and dishes herself a portion of chicken and potatoes.

Well, that works. Villanelle gives Eve a curt nod, and prepares to leave. 

"Wait, are you taking the whole thing?" Eve exclaims, looking flabbergasted. "Just like that?"

"Is there a problem?"

"Uh, wow. Huh. Well, uh, the tray is still hot," Eve says faintly.

"Oh, it doesn't bother me," Villanelle assures her. "Well, if that's all -"

She turns on her heel and marches out the front door with a tray of roasted chicken in her hands, refusing to look back, not at the noise Eve makes in the of her throat, not at the expression Eve might be wearing on her face, not at what Eve is trying to ask - with the plates set for two, and the getting on her knees and, her mouth like a silken snake, and the way Eve's eyes look when she's looking at Villanelle, like she's just on the brink of -

All in all, it was a successful visit, Villanelle decides. She went in, got what she wanted, and successfully left with food and minimal conversation. Just the way she likes it. 

Alone, in her apartment, she munches on the chicken thigh, straight off the bone, and stares at the wall in front of her. Eve's seasoning is a little over the top, and the meat is a little dry, and honestly Villanelle prefers this to if it were exquisite and dainty and perfectly calibrated, because it's all Eve's handiwork, exactly as she is, offering up what she has and what she is capable of, and Villanelle will be damned if she's going to share this with anyone else. 

It's just right.

She needs just enough Eve to keep the longing at bay, to keep it from eating her up inside. 

That's all she wants.

That's all she'll take. 

===

It's all she goes back for, in the coming days and weeks. Just enough Eve. No more, no less. 

If Eve wants anything different, well, that's not Villanelle's problem. She's already doing a huge favour to Eve as it is by not trying to kill her anymore. How much more can Villanelle do for one person, anyway? 

Eve still doesn't lock her back door, and Villanelle never manages to bring it up. She considers just asking for the key, but that, like asking Eve for anything, is a line she doesn't want to cross. She wonders if Eve keeps it unlocked, just in case, and then locks up before bed when it becomes obvious Villanelle won't be stopping by. She wonders if Eve sets the table every night waiting for her, and what she does when Villanelle doesn't come. 

She gets annoyed at herself for wondering.

But she lets herself give in to the urge to be near Eve a little more. And a little more.

But just enough.

No more, no less.

===

Something makes her steer clear of Eve when Eve's birthday rolls around, though she's distracted all morning at work and decides to take the afternoon off to treat herself to half a day at the living museum. She spends the whole time moping and wanting to murder all the families there. 

Resisting the urge is like stretching a rubber band, though, and she's about ready to snap when she flies into Eve's kitchen a few days later.

The sight of tiny specks of flame dancing before her burn her vision. She stops in her tracks, hypnotised. 

It's a - it's got - there's icing - there are RAINBOW-COLOURED SPRINKLES -

She feels the weight of Eve's questioning gaze upon her, and resists the urge to cough. Eve doesn't have to know that she didn't intend to stand there in silence, that whole time. 

"Are we having a party or something?" Villanelle asks. It's an important question.

Eve takes a moment to respond. "No, no party. Just birthday cake." 

"Your birthday was three days ago," Villanelle reminds Eve. She's aware most people don't have the superior common sense that she has, and insist on celebrating their birthdays on the actual day of, which is wholly unnecessary. 

"Yes, it was." 

So Eve didn't get the date wrong. So this is a honest-to-goodness, real-life birthday cake that Eve has baked, and Eve has been waiting for her, no one else, just her, and -

"Offering your guest three-day-old cake is the height of rudeness." Villanelle manages to extinguish all audible enthusiasm from her voice. No tremble. No high-pitched squeal or anything. She's super proud of herself.  

She doesn't care what Eve says. This is a fucking birthday party, and they are going to celebrate.

Eve is saying something, and apparently Villanelle is distracted enough that she misses it. She forces herself to hear Eve's next words. Something about having to share. It doesn't matter. It's not important.

"We'll celebrate both our birthdays," Villanelle announces. It's not fair that they only do Eve's.

"Your birthday's months away." 

Nice of Eve to remind Villanelle that she remembers. "Doesn't matter, we can still celebrate them both. To birthdays!" It's such a good idea, she doesn't wait for Eve to agree. She starts looking for something to drink.

"So, are we eating first, then?" Eve asks.

Villanelle doesn't understand the question. "Well, of course! That cake is three days old already, we can't let it age even further."

"You want to start with cake?"

Another confusing question. "Nothing wrong with starting with dessert. Where do you keep your wine glasses?"

Apparently Eve is determined to keep confusing her, because she no longer keeps alcohol around.

And then Eve explains why she no longer drinks, which reminds Villanelle of the last time she saw Eve with alcohol, felt it stick to her shoes on her apartment floor, smelt it on Eve's breath -

Villanelle decides to drop it. "Where do you keep your plates, then?"

"Above the sink. Cake knives are in the second drawer on the right." Villanelle has already started reaching and nearly misses the bomb Eve casually tosses her way. "You can hold onto it. If it makes you feel better."

Villanelle isn't sure she's heard right, at first. Eve wouldn't - she wouldn't dare. 

Eve just looks at her. 

They're having a birthday party. Eve must be joking again. It's very rude. Eve has a lousy sense of humour. 

Villanelle indicates her displeasure with a middle finger. 

Eve replies with a laugh. A, actual, full-body, genuine laugh. It goes on for some time. 

Eve's sense of humour is so weird. 

Has Villanelle ever heard Eve laugh before? 

This is the most confusing thing Villanelle has heard from Eve all night, because she's not sure why Eve is laughing at her, and how they've gotten to a point where Eve isn't afraid to laugh at her. 

The most confusing thing somehow Villanelle doesn't even mind. She could listen to the sound of Eve laughing all night, but there's a cake to serve. 

She cuts Eve a slice, and herself a bigger one. Her gluttony has not gone unnoticed, as Eve rolls her eyes lightly at Villanelle's portion. 

It's really dense, like those thick American bricks that get stuck in your throat. It's too sweet and moist and heavy and Villanelle loves every bite of it. 

Eve lets Villanelle sing Happy Birthday to them both, but refuses to join in. 

They chat while they eat. Eve is cautious. Laughs a little, which delights Villanelle, and groans more, which Villanelle still enjoys, because it's a good kind of groaning. It's the way Konstantin used to tolerate her little excesses, whenever Villanelle got a little too Villanelle.

She hasn't thought of the man in a long time. She was only 80% serious about killing him when she had the chance; even if she failed, someone else will have succeeded by now. She doesn't feel like thinking about the past now, and whatever happens, she knows she will ever see the man again in her life.  

When she remembers to, Villanelle thinks to remind Eve that she kills people for a living. She doesn't want Eve getting the wrong idea, that Villanelle has gone soft, and is the kind of person that sits around eating birthday cake with people. She needs Eve off-balance, just a little. It will keep her easy to handle, and it will be easier for Villanelle to continue to spend time with her. 

It's the longest Villanelle has spent alone with anyone in a long time. 

It's the first time she's celebrated her birthday with someone in years, too. Or celebrated someone else's birthday with them. She can't imagine anyone else she would rather share it with. 

It's a terrifying thought.

===

So maybe this can be one more thing they share, now. Not just that brief, physical connection, where Villanelle walks right up to the boundary she's been allowed to toe, and doesn't step over. 

Dinner, after, as well - and not just dinner, but shared space, and time, and conversations, and glances, and breaths. 

It's amusing spending time with Eve. Her face is elastic, and gives everything she's thinking away. When she is asked just the right questions, she gets very fun to watch.

But it's not just that she makes Villanelle laugh. The way her brain works is fascinating - she makes connections between things that have never even occurred to Villanelle before. She has opinions on all sorts of random things, the kind Villanelle might have to tolerate from victims as she lulls them into a false sense of safety moments before she kills them, but for a change she's actually interested in what Eve has to say and how she sees the world. 

Eve listens to everything Villanelle says too, forgetting no details, asking all the right questions. Her genuine interest in all things Villanelle, flattering before, somehow gives Villanelle a sense of rootedness like never before. 

When Eve lets Villanelle be exactly who Villanelle wants to be, she is the easiest to be around.

But sometimes, Eve starts to probe or push a little much, and Villanelle closes up, and Eve gets the message, and everything is straightforward and easy again.

Maybe this can be something Villanelle lets Eve have.

Not too much - Villanelle is fine with just enough, and not more. More means - complexity. More to manage. More to extricate herself from. 

Simple is good. Simple is easy. Simple is best. 

And, in the moments when it's really quiet and dark and the walls in her apartment are closing in on her, Villanelle can admit, for a brief moment, that it's for her as well. 

===

Today is not one of the easy days. Today, Eve wants more. 

She even says so, outright. Just in case Villanelle misunderstands. "I want you to touch me. In the vagina."

This is the sort of opening line that normally gets Villanelle going and enthusiastic. 

The problem is, the deliverer of said line is Eve, which makes none of this normal, and Villanelle is in no way ready or willing for more. 

Worse still, Eve's not backing down. For a minute, it looks like she will, and then - 

"What are you so afraid of?"

A weak, toothless challenge, which both of them know, and Villanelle laughs outright. "Like that's going to work on me."

"I know what does, though, right?" And then, in slow-motion, Eve gets up, makes a beeline for the knife drawer.

Villanelle is up and out of her chair before she knows it.

Eve's going ruin everything, she must know, this delicate balance, she'll cut through it, with easy, without a care in the world, she HAS to know, she's doing it on purpose, how dare she -

"Don't do that," and Villanelle's her horror, her voice is weak and powerless and imploring, like Eve is the one in control, instead of Villanelle, who has Eve pinned to the kitchen counter, "don't do that," because Villanelle doesn't want anything to change, she likes this, this whatever-it-is, she needs this, it's the best part of her whole day, she looks forward to it every day, this little room, these four walls, this comfortable warmth, this little sanctuary of Eve-and-Villanelle where Villanelle can just _be_ - 

And Eve just kisses her, and Villanelle wants to draw close, she wants to get away, but she can't do either. Her mouth is pulled to Eve's like a magnet with one polarity, her body repelled with another. 

Something is pounding, lurching against the makeshift, hand-made barrier Villanelle has been building, brick by brick, every day, over the course of these weeks; it's the dark, oily wanting inside her, churning in her stomach, unwilling to stay submerged. 

She has to stay away. She can't take more. Otherwise - 

Fuck, Eve's mouth feels so good. 

Just an inch. Just a little. 

Her thigh finds Eve's warm core, that sweet spot between her legs, and grinds, hard, clumsily, longingly.

And Eve, she suddenly just -

Villanelle doesn't even know how to describe the sound Eve makes. Eve is a mindless animal writhing beneath her, trying to shake free, and she can't stop crying.

Villanelle is the one who wants to cry. 

Eve is so, so fragile beneath her. So dear. So precious.

How could Villanelle have ever been scared of her? How could Villanelle have ever wanted to do anything but fold her in her arms, wrap them up together so tightly that no one would ever be able to tell where one of them starts and the other ends, entangled as one forever and ever and ever and ever -

Eve is shuddering in her arms, her body oh-so-close. Villanelle, rigid, limbs locked in place, dying, falling apart, inside.

_No, no, no, this isn't happening, this can't happen, not again, not again -_


	6. Chapter 6

The roar echoes in Villanelle's ears, inside her head, reverberating throughout her skull. 

The longing within her, an awoken, untamed, oozing black tar pit of a beast, is fully awoken and unleashed, prowling throughout her limbs, lashing at her skin, tearing at her boundaries, choking her, trying to come out through her lungs, threatening to overwhelm her.

Her body is screaming its want. 

_Own._

_Consume._

_Leave nothing behind._

It's not the sheer magnitude of her wanting that repels her. It's the fact that she feels it at all.

She doesn't want this. Not now. Not again. Not ever.

Not Eve.

There's a voice from far away, breaking through the murky depths, as if through water, cutting through her stupor. Eve is trying to say something, trying to reach her -

It's going to break through. 

She has to get out of here. 

"I have to go. Goodbye, Eve."

===

She doesn't know how, but when she regains her senses she finds herself back in her apartment. 

This isn't happening. Not again.  

She promised herself. She swore an oath on her own heart, because there is no God above to swear upon. No one would ever break it again.

She was supposed to remain detached. 

_Well done, Villanelle. You had one job. You failed at that, and then you failed again._

When Villanelle falls in love, it isn't beautiful, or pretty, or gentle, or healing. 

Villanelle sets things on fire. She destroys everything she touches. The black, oozing desire within her seeks to escape and burrow itself into what she desires, consuming it alive, transforming each cell slowly into her property. She infects what she loves with her unique brand of poison, and corrodes them from the inside out. She loves so hard, she loves things to death, suffocating them with the untenable amount of longing she has. 

It's what happened with Anna.

She still remembers, fresh as yesterday, the way Anna's face looked as the light slowly disappeared from her eyes, as her affection for Oksana slowly morphed to confusion, and despair, and outright hatred, as Oksana's name turned to ash in her mouth.

Villanelle did that. She did that to herself. She ruined Anna. And in doing so, she ruined herself.

Oh, Villanelle survived, barely - clinging onto a shell of an existence and clawing through, until she found a way out. Oksana had to die for her to be reborn as Villanelle.

If it happens again, Villanelle doesn't know if she would live through it. There is no way she would emerge unscathed, this time, and what monstrosity she would have to be reborn as to survive. Not after seeing that same look of pure loathing on Eve's face. Not after hearing her own name become poison in Eve's voice.

If she never hears Eve laugh again, if she never sees Eve smiles again -

If Eve reverts to the shadow of a human being that Villanelle first encountered when she first arrived in England, barely alive, merely going through the motions - 

It will have been her. She will have done that to Eve. 

That can't happen. Not again. She can't bear again living with the knowledge that her own folly, her own blindness, her own obsession will cause her own downfall. 

Once in a lifetime is enough. 

And, okay. Maybe she can't bear the thought of making Eve so small again. Of being the one to do so.

Okay. 

Okay.

There's a small part of her that -

It's not just her own involvement that matters. Not just her ego. 

A world with Eve in it, as Eve, just as she is -

\- is far, far better than one without. 

This can't continue. Villanelle can't let it.

Tomorrow, she'll be good. Tomorrow, she'll do what she needs to do.

For now, Villanelle allows her hands to grasp empty air in front of her, memorising the feel of Eve's body against her own, shaking, shuddering, sublime; remembering the taste of Eve's mouth, the fragrance of Eve's hair, the sound of Eve's desire. 

Eve is so dear to her. So precious. So beloved. 

Tomorrow, she'll make herself forget how much so.

===

She's had to kick addictions before. It hasn't been too hard. Remove the source of the temptation, and with time, the urge to indulge subsides. She's blessed with a brain that isn't predisposed to physical dependence. 

The first time she tried to quit Eve cold turkey, though - which, now that she's being entirely honest with herself, was her singular goal throughout her recovery from Eve's stabbing, and well after - things did not go so well. She ran away from Eve's memory so hard that it strung Villanelle as tight as an elastic band that simply bounced right back in Eve's direction when she eventually snapped

It's apparent by now that whatever Villanelle has for Eve runs deeper than a standard obsession. 

As much as she hates to use the word, she's being a really shitty excuse of a psychopath right now.

She's not meant to be capable of forming sincere attachments to other people. 

She's not meant to fear. 

She's not meant to be able to resist her basest urges. 

She's not meant to empathise with other people's victimhood to the point of paralysis. 

Hell, she's not meant to feel empathy for anyone at all, least of all a person she's half afraid of, who she's meant to be incapable of forming attachments to. 

She has no idea what to do, just running blind, jumping without a net, but what else is new lately?

What else is there to do except to just do what feels right? 

===

Villanelle makes an effort to expand her world beyond Eve.

She allows herself to watch Eve come and go, in the mornings and evenings, from her apartment window. But no more than that.

She goes to work. She does her job. 

She spends more time adding to and retrieving from the factoid database in her head about the people around her, whenever she has a moment of down time at work and feels the urge to start thinking about Eve instead. Jill has two cats that hate each other and puke all over the carpet daily. Ahmed's dad is sick. Chai-wen's children are flunking out of fifth grade. Never hurts to act more interested in the people around you.

After work, she will randomly hop on a bus or train and just see where it takes her, or wander around the city, and or sit on a park bench, and just idle. 

Life goes on.

She becomes increasingly distracted, and moody, and less efficient. When she can't shake it off, she asks for a week off work. She needs some space, and she doesn't particularly care if some of those jobs aren't waiting for her when she comes back. 

She decides to explore beyond the city. 

The hills of Shropshire, the southern coasts of Wales, the baths in ... Bath. 

One day, after a hike of several hours, standing atop a bare hill in the English countryside, sweeping her gaze over the three-hundred-and-sixty-degree panorama below her, the wide open sky above her head, the wind blowing through her hair, Villanelle takes a moment to consider her life now. 

This is what freedom is meant to feel like. 

There's no glamour, no excitement, no thrill of the chase. She can't do whatever she feels like, whenever she feels like it, without first considering if she is able to, or if there will be consequences to her actions. 

This is how everyone else lives.

It's how she's lived all these months.

It's gone against her every natural instinct, but she's gotten used to it. And she's even genuinely enjoyed some of it.  

Maybe she fooled herself into thinking that this could become a permanent state of affairs for her, because whenever it got too dreary, too monotonous, too colourless, there was Eve, at the end of a long day. 

There was home. 

Without Eve, then what? 

Without Eve, warm, affectionate, forgiving, accepting - 

\- but really, all along - 

Eve, whose motivations, wants, and desires Villanelle did not consider, has not wanted to consider, all along. 

It's not that she seeks redemption in Eve's eyes, or salvation in Eve's forgiveness. As far as Villanelle is concerned, when it comes to interpersonal matters of any sort, everything is fair game, nothing is forbidden. If someone wrongs you, that's on you for being too weak to do anything about it. Technically, this also applies to what Eve did to her in Paris, even if it doesn't stop Villanelle from being royally pissed off about it, but when all is said and done, she only has herself to blame for lowering her guard and underestimating her opponent. 

And so Villanelle has sought to keep Eve cowed and her head lowered, holding her knife at the ready for whenever she needs it, because there's no way on earth Villanelle is letting herself be so vulnerable again -

\- except it wasn't the sight of Eve bowed and broken before her that filled Villanelle with pleasure; it was the look in Eve's face whenever Eve tried to fight - whenever she tried to push back - and it wasn't the sight of Eve struggling, and flailing, but the knowledge that she dared to push back at all.

And so Villanelle had to lift her foot from Eve's throat eventually, because what was for her own survival at first was getting in the way of what came next: an uneasy, unbalanced co-existence, where Villanelle maintained control and Eve - allowed? accepted? tolerated? - Villanelle's incursions into Eve's life. 

Except Eve wants more, and Villanelle knows this, and even understands this, but what "more" is, Villanelle cannot tell for certain. More sex, Eve has been clear of that. More exchange of information about each other, so that Eve may know more about Villanelle and Villanelle may know more about Eve, in turn.

And after that? What comes next?

A - relationship? Whatever that means - whatever that looks like. The sort that two people who love each other very much have. The kind in romantic comedies, where the guy gets the girl, or the girl gets the guy, or someone gets someone else, and it always looks so ridiculously facile.  

Even if Villanelle manages to figure it out, some day - there's no way Eve will get what she wants before Villanelle destroys her in the process. 

Better for Eve that Villanelle remain at a distance. That way, no one gets hurt. Not Eve, and most of all not Villanelle. 

And with Eve no longer a sanctuary for her, what else is supposed to keep her going? What's keeping her tethered here? 

The answer is staring her right in the face, and she doesn't want to admit it. 

Villanelle kicks a loose rock and watches it roll limply away in the grass.

When it comes to love, it turns out Villanelle can be every bit as boring and mundane as everyone else in the world. Shit. 

She wishes she had it in her to gag at her stupid self. Instead, she mopes a little, feels sorry for herself, and starts screaming sappy love songs at the top of her lungs while peppering them with curse words. It doesn't make her feel better, but it gets her a few amused glances and more annoyed ones, particularly from the parents, and she comforts herself with the fact that now other people are having a crummy day as well. 

The sky is so vast. 

She feels so alone. 

She wonders if Eve feels alone right now as well. 

Once she's within cel range, she takes a burner phone from her stash and sends a text to the number she still has for Niko Polastri in Canterbury, telling him to go lend his ex-wife a comforting hand. She burns with jealousy all the while, but he's the only person she can think of when it comes to Eve, not to mention the only person she has access to, and better him than her right now. It's the least she can do. Just to be nice. Eve should be bloody grateful. 

===

Move on. 

Two words that Villanelle must start entertaining, as reluctant as she is to do so. 

Villanelle has never dug too deeply into the actions or motivations of the organisation that used to pay her - even if she has wondered, showing interest is a short cut to a hastened obsolescence. Out of habit, she's only kept the loosest of tabs on their potential movements in England - just enough so that she has an idea of their presence, and not enough to let it impact her.

She's aware that she's become a bit of a celebrity in their circle - the assassin who can't get her murder boner up anymore - and occasionally she has felt examining, disinterested eyes upon her as she goes about her day. She never acts like she's noticed, and they never act like they know she's noticed, and anyway, as long as they're just passing through, and steer completely clear of Eve, she's completely fine with being an object of their morbid fascination. 

Now, she starts looking a little more closely at potential operations, trying to see if she can tease out any patterns or trends. They're certainly out and about, though she's not sure she's got a good read on the latest developments. Something seems a little odd, and she can't put her finger on it. A brief, annoying thought crosses her mind that Eve would probably know, and she bats it away; she still has a little professional pride left in her reserves.  

If she can take a stab - literally - at a potential next target, it might put her back into their good graces, enough for them to trust her again with more work. The organisation doesn't usually reward nor encourage rogue actions, but if she plays her cards right - for instance, if an illustrious colleague, taking a detour to gawk at the impotent assassin, happens to cross her path, and they unfortunately tussle, suddenly they're down an operative - but, ooh, wouldn't you know it, there's Villanelle in just the right place and the right time to finish the job. Things may still work in her favour.

Of course, there are a huge number of unknowns in this convoluted plan, the biggest hurdle being that Villanelle still has to resolve that pesky issue of her not being able to murder people. She'll have to think of something there. Putting herself in the path of another operative won't be completely a walk in the park, but it's probably the most achievable part of this whole thing. 

There's one more unknown. Probably the most important one - and that's whether or not Villanelle actually wants to go back to her old life at all. 

Her brain can see no possible pathway in which a life of contract assassinations can co-exist with Eve as a presence in it. Given that she's already determined that she is in no position to get any closer to Eve, for both of their sakes, resuming her old life would align with her interests perfectly, except -  

All Villanelle can think about is what the look on Eve's face will be when she finds out that Villanelle is killing again.

Maybe Eve will be thrilled that they can resume their cat-and-mouse chase across the continent. Maybe she'll be rejuvenated at the prospect of staying in step with Villanelle, as Villanelle leads her down a series of blind leads and dark alleyways. 

Maybe Eve will feel that she has no choice but to end Villanelle properly, once and for all, and eventually, one day, they'll find themselves on the opposite ends of a gun barrel or a knife blade - 

Would Eve be able to finish the job, this time?

Will Villanelle ever be able to raise her hand against Eve? 

But even those questions are a distraction from another issue, which is whether Villanelle even misses that life, and whether or not she wants to reclaim it. 

Her current life may be one of quiet boredom, but that doesn't mean the answer is to go back to that hedonistic, anarchic, free-for-all. That old lifestyle was merely the best potential pathway that was presented to her at the time. She had embarked on it gladly and willingly, but it did not mean that there were many better alternatives on hand. 

Being able to choose would be the real freedom. If she has a choice.

She considers the possibility of the organisation leaving her to her own devices, should she never kill for them again. As far as she knows, chances are middling - employee satisfaction and retention is low on their list of priorities, but permanently enforced servitude was never one of the terms of employment, even if they selected only very particular individuals predisposed to the work. There are those who have tried to get out and gotten killed for it. There are others who have taken an indefinitely long break, lived long and separate lives, and remained on hand to perform a favour, should the need arise.

She'll have to convince them that she's capable of the latter.

And so she's back to the first issue again, namely, how Eve would look at her if Villanelle takes another life in self-interest. 

Eve wouldn't have to know.

But she'd figure it out. Villanelle doesn't know how, but she knows Eve will know. 

And so, Villanelle's mind goes around in circles, unable to choose a path forward. 

All she wants is something easy and straightforward, the path of least resistance. She just can't tell which path that might be.

===

Maybe seeing Eve will help. 

Who is she trying to fool?

Seeing Eve always helps. 

Villanelle stops by, in the evening, around the same time as she always does. Eve has left the door unlocked for her, as usual. It smells of heat and spices inside.

She peeks around the kitchen wall cautiously. It's been a while since she's seen Eve, and she's not sure what to expect.

Eve greets her, at least. It's going far better than Villanelle expected already. 

As usual, she doesn't know what she's doing here, other than to share the same space Eve is occupying, so she lets Eve drive the conversation. 

They make some pleasant small talk while Eve cooks. 

Eve made curry. Villanelle likes curry. 

But then Eve seems a little upset that Villanelle has not shown her face in a while.

All in all, Eve seems to have mixed feelings about Villanelle in general. This is fair. It's exactly how Villanelle feels about Eve, after all. 

Eve asks Villanelle for a plate. Villanelle decides to be helpful, and hands her one. 

Then Eve asks her how much she wants to eat, and Villanelle realises that she neglected the important fact that coming over always means staying for dinner, which means spending more time with Eve, alone, and that's more than she's ready for, right now -

"I'm not staying." Villanelle is almost sorry. 

"Is this it then? Are you here to break up with me now?"

This is one of the inconveniences of not bothering with the minutiae of Eve's thought processes until now. Villanelle racks her brain for a response and settles on, "Were we going out?"

Eve has a lot to say, and doesn't stop. "Not a conventional courtship, to be sure, but I thought there was a spark there. You know how it goes. Girl meets girl in bathroom. Girl kills a bunch of people. Girl gets stabbed by other girl. The stuff of romantic comedies!"

"Wow, Eve. That's ..." Villanelle crosses her arms, feeling a little off-balance. This is not a conversation she came equipped for. Maybe Eve is trying to be funny, again? It's unclear what Eve is playing at, but she's certainly not aiming to keep the ball in play, and Villanelle doesn't want to give her the wrong answer. " ... a lot to process."

"And it's not even the half of it! I could go on, but you get the idea."

"I get the idea," Villanelle says hastily. She's not sure she can handle it if Eve does go on in this vein. Maybe if she finds the root of the issue... "Eve, I might be imagining it, but are you upset I'm not staying for dinner?"

"Why are you even here? Where have you been?"

Voice is raised. Pupils dilated. Eve is definitely upset that Villanelle hasn't been by. She hasn't been seeing anyone else, in a physical sense, Villanelle knows. No wonder Eve is on edge. Villanelle can't really help with that right now, though. 

Villanelle shares all she's comfortable with sharing at the moment. "I just needed some time and space to think some things through. I just wanted to let you know."

"You could have left me a note, you know. Or even sent me a text. I'm sure you know my number by now."

Villanelle supposes Eve is right. But at the time, it felt like too much for Villanelle to handle. She doesn't really have a good reason to give Eve. Eve is waiting for one. 

This is why dealing with other people is so much trouble. 

"I just needed some time." It's all Villanelle knows to say. It's all she CAN say.

"Why did you text Niko?"

At least this question has an easy answer. "You've grown kind of fond of me, so I thought you might get lonely without me around."

Villanelle did not expect her only answer to be the wrong answer.

"Oh my god, I can't believe you! You crazy person!" Eve is shouting. "He's off limits!"

"What? What did I do now?" Villanelle is confused, and also, starting to get a little annoyed. "Just so you know, crazy person is just as upsetting as psychopath, and it's not medically accurate."

Eve covers her face. "Look. I just, I don't know." Villanelle watches and waits for Eve to make her next move. 

Eve has come to some kind of decision. She insists on Villanelle taking the entire pot of curry she's working on. "I won't wait around for you. Just stop by when you're ready. Maybe it's good that you don't stop by for a while. For both of us."

Villanelle doesn't know how, but maybe Eve does get it, in her own way. This is more than Villanelle deserves. But curry is curry, and she's not going to say no. 

"Thanks for dinner," Villanelle says, sincerely. She takes the pot of curry from Eve. Eve helps her with the front door, waits until Villanelle is outside, and then closes it behind her, respecting Villanelle's boundaries. 

Not for the first time, Villanelle feels that Eve deserves better. 

Once Villanelle has managed to lug the entire pot up four flights of stairs - it's not overly heavy, just unwieldy - she helps herself to her first taste of Eve's cooking in what feels like an age. It's really, really good, and it's not even her sentimentality taking over; it's genuinely tasty. There's always the possibility that Villanelle's refined, well-honed palate has finally succumbed to the blunt brutality of English cuisine, but she doesn't think so. 

This hasn't made her decision any easier.   
   
She doles the cooled-down remainders into leftover takeaway containers she has lying around and refrigerates them. It really is a lot of curry. It'll last her for a while. 

She'll take until she finishes every last remaining container. She'll make her decision by then.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is the end in sight? I think it is ... I think it is. *gasp* 
> 
> *snores*


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been bad with warnings, so this chapter includes warnings for some mild violence and injuries with knives.

Villanelle has only just started her morning shift at the USA-style diner that she's not certain will be staying in business for very much longer when her phone screams and vibrates in her pocket. There are precious few notifications that are set at that high of a priority, so she immediately begs off for the shift with an excuse about a sick, practically dying friend, and dashes out of there. 

Someone's probably going to be dying, anyway, and she hopes it's not her. Has a gawking colleague gotten a little too close, a little too curious? Is today the day the organisation has chosen to reach some sort of conclusion with her? Of course today she's working further from her apartment than normal, taking it longer than normal to go back, because she has decided to branch out a little.

She sprints the whole way back, into her building, up the stairs, and slows her footfalls for the last few steps to remain quiet, as well as to regain her breath. 

Her door looks undisturbed. The lock remains intact. Entry must have been unforced. 

Slowly, gently, she tries the handle. It has been left unlocked. 

In one continuous motion, she opens the door, steps inside, and closes it behind her, while readying her knife. Her eyes adjust to the figure standing in the middle of the room.  
It takes her by surprise, even though it is not entirely unexpected. Villanelle lets some tension flow out of her shoulders and puts her knife back in her pocket. 

Eve has, once again, found her way into Villanelle's home. Forced her way into Villanelle's space. How familiar.

Villanelle must have been careless, let her guard down, let Eve catch a glimpse of her - of course she's been careless, she's left openings everywhere, it's been ages since she's properly had her guard up around Eve -

"Oh, come on, you could at least do me the courtesy of looking surprised to see me," Eve greets her. 

Villanelle resets her motion detector, watching and listening intently. Eve is not an immediate threat, but she isn't not one, either.

"Ah, motion sensor alert to your smartphone, that's how you figured out I was here so fast."

Villanelle idly notes the champagne bottle in Eve's hand. Suggesting that Eve came here for a party seems a bad idea right now. 

"Wait, are you wearing - is that a hot dog uniform? What are you even -"

Villanelle removes the floppy cap from her head, and vows to quit the job at the diner soon so she never has to wear this uniform ever again. 

"You know what? I don't even care. Fuck you. Fuck. You."

Ah. So that's it. Eve has reached her breaking point, without Villanelle realising Eve was close to it.

"Did you plan this? Did you plan this along, with everything else?"

Eve has always had questions, and Villanelle has always withheld the answers, because she hasn't wanted Eve to know, because knowledge is power, and Eve just keeps asking, and asking, and pushing, because Eve wants more, because Eve is sick of being powerless -

"How long? How fucking long have you been here? Weeks? Months? Since when? Since the beginning?"

Eve is so, so angry right now. Even when Villanelle did her worst, even when Villanelle did things she knew would be unforgiveable, Eve was never angry with her. Quiet, muted, despairing maybe. Now - it's unrelenting. It's unpleasant.

It's difficult. 

"You said -" Villanelle tries to staunch the flow of rage. "You said I could take all the time I needed." 

Evidently Eve did not mean it. Instead, she's angry. She's sick of Villanelle's bullshit dodging, and she wants answers.

It would be so easy - should be so easy - for Villanelle to simply open her mouth and give her an answer. Just one. But giving Eve answers means giving Eve power, and giving Eve power is - too much. Too soon. Too unthinkable, because with that power in her hand, Eve might - one day - turn on her -

"Fine. FINE. Let me tell you how I found you, at least. Please, at least just give me that. Please just let me feel RIGHT about something, for ONCE."

Villanelle loves it when people beg helplessly, desperate to feel in control. This should feel great, but it doesn't.

"I just want to talk to you, Villanelle! We don't talk enough. Don't you think we don't talk enough?"

"We talk sometimes," Villanelle tries weakly. 

Eve disagrees. Of course she does. Because every time Eve tries to talk about something that actually matters, Villanelle has put a stop to it. And yet Eve still tries, still persists, even when Villanelle has given her nothing to work with nor any indication that anything might be different.   

"I know," Villanelle acknowledges quietly. Because she does. 

That seems to mollify Eve, a little, or at least it makes her take another chug of champagne. 

Villanelle recalls what Eve told her about no longer having drink in the house, and successfully pries the bottle away from Eve, setting it aside gingerly. She doesn't feel like cleaning up broken champagne glass.

No - she doesn't want anything making Eve more upset than Eve already is. Eve being upset makes Villanelle upset, for a variety of reasons, at least one of them being that having to deal with all this irrationality is a chore, and it's starting to wear on her. The other, deeper reasons all have to do with the thought of Eve in pain - and Villanelle doesn't - can't - dig into that right now.  

But then, of course Eve has a spare bottle in that cavernous handbag of hers, and she continues drinking. 

There has to be some way for Villanelle to do something. To gain control of this conversation. To make Eve stop hurting.

"Ask me how I found this place. I want to tell you."

There can't be that much to tell. "Well, you do live just across the street." 

"One more time. Ask me how the FUCK I found your flat."

If it makes her happy. "How did you find my flat, Eve?"

A GPS tracker embedded in a homecooked meal isn't Villanelle's first guess, but then it occurs to her that Eve wouldn't have expected Villanelle to be literally across the street, even though from Villanelle's perspective a nearby location just out of view is the most natural hideout ever. As Eve continues, explaining the lengths she went to, to procure the tracker and how she came by the keys to enter Villanelle's apartment without breaking in, it becomes apparent that Villanelle's campaign of terror against her has been wildly successful beyond imagination, even in Villanelle's current flawed, inadequate state. 

This has been what Villanelle has been aiming for all along, hasn't it? Keeping Eve off-balance and uncertain so that Villanelle can feel in control? Eve has always been so unbreakable, unyielding, that in her own preoccupation with herself - having her own head stuck so far up her own ass - Villanelle has failed to consider that all along, Eve has been as terrified of Villanelle as Villanelle has been wary of Eve.

She wonders what sort of extraordinary, outsized monster Eve sees when Eve looks at her, and why Eve has continued to invite this monster back into her home.

Villanelle can only tell the truth. Hopefully it's enough. "I didn't plan any of this."

"Liar!" Eve shouts. "You lying, lying, liar!"

It hurts. 

"You were following me! You were popping up everywhere! You were stalking me! Just to find ways to torment me!"

It hurts. "No, I -"

"And then, when you got sick of showing up my house, you went and got in touch with my husband?"

Why are they talking about him all of a sudden? "Ex-husband." The correction comes out more harshly than she intends. 

"Ex-husband. What was that, huh? A threat? A warning?"

"I told you." It's getting frustrating that whenever Villanelle does manage to give Eve the answers she's so desperately seeking that Eve isn't bothering to remember them. "I thought you'd be lonely. You could talk to him and feel less lonely."

"No, Villanelle, try again, with the real reason this time. Did I piss you off or something? Did I do something wrong?"

The more Eve talks, the more bewildered Villanelle becomes. "I think I have no idea what you are talking about." Also, she would really rather prefer to not talk about Niko Polastri right now. Or at all.

Eve has other ideas. "He really didn't deserve any of this, you know? You, showing up in our house, showing up in our lives, and me being all - all -"

Boohoo, poor fucking Niko. "You being all what?"

"Unfair to him, over you."

That makes no sense. If anything, Eve has only been unfair to Villanelle, by going ahead and stabbing her. And whatever Eve has gotten up to in the meantime in her personal life, she can't keep going around pinning everything on Villanelle. Villanelle has been nothing but decent to that walking sack of meat, who, by the way, Villanelle has never laid a hand on, so -

"Ah, right, I remember! It's all my fault, right? You losing your job and husband? Not because of your own actions and choices, no no, not at all."

Ex-husband, fuck, now Eve has got Villanelle all messed up too. 

"Do you know you made me feel like I couldn't love him anymore?"

Villanelle's heart jumps at that, just a little, a tiny spark of hope - 

"Because you go after people that we love, and you hurt them, just because we love them -"

Anna.

How dare she, how dare Eve - 

"Oh, Eve." Villanelle has to stop her, stop the hurting, and she'll knock Eve down a few pegs too while she's at it. "Do you know how self-important you sound? You should really work on controlling that ego of yours."

"What even am I to you, then? Why don't you tell me exactly what the fuck is going on in that fucked up brain of yours? Huh? What do you even want from me?"

So. Many. QUESTIONS. "Please. Would you stop shouting."

"Ask me why I'm shouting, Villanelle! Ask me why the fuck I'm screaming at the top of my lungs like a crazy person!"

"Why are you shouting, Eve?!" 

"You break into my house, you assault me, you, you, you, you RAPE me -"

It's the first time Villanelle can recall that Eve has used that word, and it hits Villanelle in the stomach like a cannonball. It shouldn't bother her. It didn't before, so why on earth now -

She nearly misses what Eve says next. "Was I? Was I actually nice to you?" How can that be, when Eve has been carrying it with her all this time?

Maybe Eve has run out of steam, or is stopping to think it through, but instead she barrels ahead, determined to keep her rage going.

"You stopped hurting me, and you kept coming back, all this time, while living - right - HERE? In this shitty, empty flat? In shitty, shithole Birmingham!?" 

Sure, her flat is may be shitty, but -

"What the FUCK happened to you, Villanelle?!"

"Birmingham is a PERFECTLY fine city," Villanelle says petulantly, even though not really talking about Birmingham anymore.

No, Eve just wants to fight. 

She just wants to shit all over Villanelle. 

She just wants to remind Villanelle who Villanelle used to be.

She just wants to remind Villanelle that Villanelle is nothing now. 

She really knows how to hit where it hurts, and she doesn't even know the whole truth yet.

"I just want to know, why, why, why, why, WHY?" Eve is screaming. "WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU HERE?! WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?"

Every question is a massive blow to Villanelle's body. She doesn't even know how to begin to answer. She has to try. 

"Eve, I didn't mean - I didn't intend for -"

"Oh, stop with your bullshit already -"

Villanelle is trying, she's really trying -

"- stop with your transparent, miserable attempts to make your face all beautiful and sad and wobbly and shit -"

\- she can't even control her expression anymore, she can barely stand upright - 

"- you fucking, crazy, psychopath."

_Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh_.

There it is. 

It's like she can see clearly again, like someone has flipped on a mega-voltage spotlight and shone it straight into her eyes. 

She's been going about this all wrong. She's been looking at it from the wrong angle this whole time.

All this time, she has been agonising over how imperfect she is for Eve. How deficient she is in the norms and feelings and traits that make up a functional human being; how much damage she would do to Eve in her natural state. 

Instead, what she should really be concerned with is whether Eve is the right person for HER. 

Eve is the one lacking the requisite features to keep up with her. Eve is the one too boring, too mundane, too irrational, too average to be able to handle what she is really like.

Eve is the one who will always claim the moral high ground, acting kind and sympathetic and understanding of her differences, and Eve is the one who will always hold her differences against her. 

Eve has made her dull. Slow. Weak. Useless. Incompetent. 

Eve is the problem.

This whole time, there only ever has been one path before her. She has been deluded to think otherwise. 

===

She's missed this. Pure, certain clarity, all the way from the top of her head to the tips of her fingers. 

She knows exactly what she has to do now. 

... first, she needs to clear her schedule for the day ...

Okay, then. Nothing else weighing on her now. 

She's completely cold, right now. In a good way. Calm. Stable. Precise. 

She'll tell Eve the truth. 

She'll finish what she came here to do.

She'll go back to her old life. 

It's not a matter of whether she can. It's a matter of when.

Seek an opening. Stick the knife in. Retrieve the knife.  

Practice makes perfect. 

She'll get it eventually.

Eve is in disbelief. "You can't. You won't."

"I can. Are you ready?" 

"I'm not ready. I want answers." 

They all do. Eve is no different from anyone else she's killed. Trying to bargain. Buy time. Just like everyone else.

"Is this what you want? Is this what you really want?"

What a waste of time. "I want you dead." 

And, wow. She nearly bursts out laughing; Eve's backup plan is that sad. "You brought a meat cleaver to a knife fight."

At least Eve has the grace to look embarrassed. "Mine's bigger."

She can almost see Eve's thought process: knife, scary; big knife, scarier! "You know what they say about size."

"It's the only thing that matters, right?" About to die, and Eve still has time for banter. 

"I really will miss you, Eve." She means it. She's had some good times. 

In slow motion, the bottle of champagne arcs towards her face. Easily dodged. 

Eve's next move is to act insane. As if Eve can create a force field with sheer movement. 

She waits for an opening. "You're going to hurt someone with that thing."

Eve opens her mouth to respond, and -

\- knife edge to cleaver heel, angled outward, one continuous motion -

Eve's wrist snaps back. The cleaver goes flying. 

There's her opening. 

Eve is wide open. Completely vulnerable. 

There's a nice spot, right below her left bosom.

Okay. Okay.

Okay.

So it's still too soon. She needs a little more warm-up. 

"Pick it up." Eve doesn't move. "Pick up the knife, Eve. Let's keep this just a little bit interesting."

Eve moves slowly. Too slowly.

Eve with a weapon is a threat to be put down. Eve without a weapon is - 

She needs Eve to pick up the damn meat cleaver, so she can try again.

With enough cajoling, Eve makes herself a target again. 

About fucking time. "Eve. Are you ready?"

She isn't. But Eve doesn't have to know that. 

This time - knife edge to cleaver blade centre - Eve's cleaver flies backwards. 

She waits for Eve to pick it up, and go again.

Knife edge to cleaver heel. 

Knife edge to cleaver heel. 

Knife tip to handle - too close for comfort - Eve drops the knife out right. Blood starts gushing from her fingers.

Oh, oh, yes. This is a proper warm-up alright.

Knife edge to cleaver spine.  

Knife edge to - a miss - into the wrist. The skin breaks. 

A small river of red crawling up Eve's arms. 

Ah. Ah.

She can still do this. 

Knife edge to cleaver heel.

Eve looks determined, though probably not for much longer. 

Her? She can go on all day.

At this rate she may have to. 

===

Knife edge to cleaver heel.

Knife tip to cleaver spine.  

Eve's knife is covered in blood.

Eve's hands are covered in blood. 

Eve's still thinking there's some way out of this.

Meanwhile, she's still no closer to killing Eve.

It's just a matter of time, though. 

===

It goes on.

She has made exactly zero progress.

All she can do is keep trying. 

It's all she knows. She sees no other way. 

She'll just have to keep trying forever. 

===

"I'm done." Eve doesn't pick up the knife this time. "I'm done."

She must have heard wrong. 

"I give up. You win. Go ahead. End it. I'm letting you. I want you to."

That's no good. "You want me to - Eve, there's no fun in killing someone suicidal."

Eve can't have given up. That's not right. That's not like Eve. 

"I don't want to kill you," Eve tells her. 

A nice sentiment, but highly inconvenient for her. 

Eve just needs the right incentive. "Guess who I'm going after once you're dead?"

Everyone. She is going to go after everyone. 

But Eve doesn't take the bait. She's acting like she's given up entirely. 

There's a catch. There must be. 

"Can I just - I just want to say something nice right now? I want the last thing I say to be something nice."

This is Eve's final stand. The last resort of a wounded, dying animal. 

Cornered beasts are at their most dangerous. 

It's got to be now. She'll be able to do it now. 

"I really like you. Like, so much. You have no idea for how long I've liked you. Even before we met, I knew who you were, and I liked you."

Words of honey, coating a poisoned daggered tongue

"I was a huge fan, did you know? Well, I was a huge fan, until, my friend, my partner, what you did to him, I, I couldn't be a fan anymore after that. It was too personal. I loved him. More than anyone. More than Niko, even. But you must have picked up on that. That's why you killed him."

The words trigger sensations and memories that flow through her, into her knife hand, making it itch. It's a good feeling. 

"I was so mad at you, you know? I swore I'd kill you, after that. But then you appeared in front of me, and it was like - wow."

Villanelle remembers the moment, under the wooded trees, the lighting just right, Eve's hand on her heart, and she can't help her response. "Wow."

"I was supposed to want you dead, but instead, I just - I just wanted to know more about you. Even though I hated you. Even though you scared the shit out of me."

Focus. She has to focus. 

"Do you remember what I said to you, back in Paris? I don't know if you remember it -"

Every fucking word. 

"- and maybe you don't believe me after what happened. And maybe you don't believe me now -" 

Not a single word.

"- but every word of I said back then was true, and it still is, even right now. I'm not - I'm not really afraid of dying."

She would be an idiot to fall for anything Eve has to say to her again.

"What I'm afraid of is - not knowing. Never really figuring you out, and never having the chance to."

There is a world of possibility in Eve's words, stretching out infinitely into the horizon - 

She tells Eve to pick up the knife and slice open her own neck. Eve can do it. She'll make Eve do it.

Eve refuses. 

"If you're still too afraid to kill me," Eve looks straight into her eyes, "just let me go."

She should know better than the respond to the taunt, and yet. "I am not afraid. I am not afraid of you." As if saying it out loud will make it true. 

Even Eve is not convinced, pointing out all the soft, vulnerable openings on her body where a knife would slide right in. There. There. There. 

Reverse psychology, as a last-minute desperation play? "That is a very strange way of trying to talk me out it."

Eve is smiling at her. "No, I'm done talking. I just want to love something before I die. I love you, Villanelle. I love you."

Words so longed for, and so dreaded - 

Eve's killing blow lands, squarely, in Villanelle's heart. 

===

Villanelle is flung to Eve, her knife leading the charge, her target the inviting hollow just below her left breast, her aim true -

\- instead, her other arm betrays her, reaching for Eve's throat, shoving, hard, pushing Eve out of the way of a fatal blow. They swivel, change direction, and fall against the wall.

A hand at Eve's throat, a knife pressed against Eve's gut. The skin there is so thin. 

The knife is right there. She just has to push. 

Eve is so fragile, so small beneath her.

But Eve is not weak. And she's not broken. Her voice carries all the conviction that Villanelle currently lacks.  "Do it, I'm ready now."

"I'm going to make this hurt so badly." For which one of them? Villanelle doesn't even know anymore. 

"I love you."

And another blow, aimed directly at Villanelle's left chest cavity -

"Oh god, do it already, before I freak out, before I piss myself, before I completely lose my mind -"

Eve is reaching down between them, fumbling for Villanelle's hands. Eve's hands close over her own. She squeezes, gently, then pulls their joined hands towards her stomach. 

It isn't even a choice.

Villanelle flies backwards, putting as much distance between Eve as she can. She's halfway across the room before she realises what she's done. 

Eve's voice, frantic, shaken, breaks through her haze, and Villanelle catches the end of it. "... why can't you just kill me already?" 

"I can kill you. I can kill you."

_- ignoring the truth before you, instead of accepting reality as it is, is the fastest path to guaranteed failure -_

This room is so small. Was it always this small? 

_\- if something has gone wrong, there's no point in pretending everything is fine -_

From somewhere behind her, a low, tentative voice -

"You can't kill me."

Oh, no, Eve has figured it out.

"I can, I can, I can, I can," Villanelle insists.

She's not ready, not for what comes next.

Eve's breathing has changed. "You can't kill me." Then, firmer, and more certain. "You can't kill me."

"I can! I can I can I can!"  

If she can't - then who is she? Who can she even be anymore? Where in the world is there a place for who she is now? 

"You can't kill me." Eve's voice continues, relentless. "You can't kill ... you can't kill anyone."

"I CAN -"

She can't. 

"I CAN, I CAN, I CAN, I CAN -"

Maybe she never will again. 

She needs a bigger knife. 

She wants to destroy everything. 

"I CAN, I CAN, I CAN -"

It's time to accept reality for what it is. There's only one truth now, one she can't keep at bay, no matter how much she tries to childishly run away from it. 

In this life and the next, in all her possible futures, in whatever reality she inhabits -

\- Villanelle will never, ever, ever be capable of killing Eve. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: a stabbing, and blood.

When Villanelle eventually comes to her senses, she finds her apartment wall half-demolished, her throat hoarse, and the entire right side of her upper body screaming at her. She feels completely drained, like she's spent a really long time crying and everything has leaked out of her body, leaving just a limp shell.

She sinks to the floor, the back of her shirt snagging against the damaged wall.

God, she could really use a nap. 

Except Eve is still here, just watching in silence.

Villanelle takes the opportunity to really look at Eve, for the first time in months. 

Eve is dressed in ... for lack of a better phrasing, her usual, specific, practical style. In another time and place, Villanelle might have vomited all over Eve's clothes, but she's gotten used to the sight of them; the shapeless, baggy clothing has melded with Villanelle's mental definition of Eve as much as her gorgeous hair. Villanelle herself hasn't been dressing in anything to write home about, so she's in no position to judge anyone. Her hair, as usual, is scattered around her head in a dark Medusa-like halo. With a lightly-furrowed brow, her eyes seem brighter, her gaze sharper and more focused than Villanelle has seen of her all this time she's been in England. Her gaze is direct, curious, and uncompromising, though the gentle curl to one corner of her mouth lends her face warmth.

This must be what Eve's face looks like when Eve isn't terrified of her. 

Villanelle feels vaguely like a lab animal under fond but intense observation. Being the object of such acute, positive attention appeals to some deep vanity within her, but also makes her want to climb the walls. She is exposed, completely naked, and wants desperately to cover herself, but it's way too late for that now Eve has seen everything. 

What is Eve seeing when she looks at Villanelle now? 

Villanelle closes her eyes. Maybe when she reopens them Eve will have gone, along with everything else weighing her down. It's a ridiculous thought, made more ridiculous by the fact that the last thing she wants is for Eve not to be there. 

Sure enough, when Villanelle feels like rejoining the world again, Eve is still there, hopeful and expectant, like an eager cocker spaniel itching to pounce on a toy and just waiting for permission. 

Eve, the eager cocker spaniel, makes a noise in the back of her throat.

An immature petulance bubbles to Villanelle's surface. "I don't want to talk about it."

Though Eve acquiesces, Villanelle still practically see her pointed ears, her tail quivering.

Eventually Eve asks if she can use the bathroom. Villanelle's too tired for games, but asks Eve to keep the door open. She closes her eyes again, the sound of Eve's quiet movements in her ears, listening for anything out of the ordinary, because she's feeling pretty helpless right now and unequipped for anything Eve might do to her.

This certainly is not a high point in her special-agent-slash-assassin career so far. There's a woman peeing one room over and she can't even enjoy it. 

When Eve reappears, bloodied hands gripping her clean towels, she looks like she is trying to decide what to do next.

Eve wants to stay.

Eve wants to talk.

That's all Eve's wanted to do, for a while now. Just to talk.

Villanelle racks her brains, trying to remember why she's been trying so hard to avoid giving Eve what she wants, and realises she can't remember a single good reason anymore. 

She relents. "Your staring is making me deeply uncomfortable. Go ahead. Ask. Get it out of your system."

And with the floodgates opened, Eve takes off at full sprint, bombarding Villanelle with all manner of questions in whatever order her brain appears to be generating them. 

She groans. She's going to regret this.

===

And yet.

With every question asked and willingly, clumsily, or reluctantly answered, the weight settling on her body lightens, and her muscles begin to unclench, little by little. 

The thought is equal parts hilarious and revolting, but maybe all along Villanelle has just needed someone she could talk to. Exchanges with Konstantin were in riddles, idle threats and unsuccessful probes for information. She keeps the dialogue with the strangers who are her frequent sex partners perfunctory and practical. Her most honest and profound conversations, when she can have them, are in the final moments she snatches from a victim just before they succumb to that long eternal sleep, and half the time they're probably not actually listening to her anyway. 

Eve is listening. Eve is paying attention. 

Eve knows who she is. And Eve still wants to know more. 

Villanelle kind-of, sort-of, wants her to know. It's exhilarating.

It's terrifying. 

For years now, she's lived life sprinting headfirst into the unknown. It's what has kept life fun and exhilarating and worthwhile - it's what made her feel alive. Yet, somewhere along the way, things went off the rails. Something happened -

\- Eve happened - 

\- and Villanelle shattered into a thousand pieces. She had no choice but to knit herself back together, but like that famed nursery rhyme egg, she failed to put herself back together quite in the same way. 

Villanelle's always been broken, and she's never minded, but now she's broken in a way that no one wants. 

Yet. And yet. And yet.

Eve, against all odds, after everything that has happened, still likes her - 

\- Eve _loves_ her -

\- and maybe in her own way, Eve is broken, too. Maybe Villanelle is responsible, or maybe Eve has always been broken in some way that Villanelle doesn't quite understand. She would probably have to be, to still be sitting here, rapt and listening, instead of running and screaming in the opposite direction.

Maybe Eve has no idea what's good for her. If she did, she'd be aware that Villanelle certainly isn't. Or maybe she doesn't care.

So then. Here they are now, Eve-and-Villanelle, Villanelle-and-Eve, together, in the same room, forgotten and uncared for by the world outside. Just two lightly-damaged, broken women propelled to each other's gravitational orbit, sharing a time and space, with eyes only for each other. 

A path forward, to that future of simplicity and freedom Villanelle seeks, is still murky. But she has to stop running some time. Small steps, instead, one at a time, to what she longs for, right in front of her. 

Is it normal? Probably. 

Healthy? Villanelle can't even begin to imagine what that means. 

Mundane? Without a doubt.

Will she be satisfied? Remains to be seen. 

Maybe Villanelle's obsession will destroy Eve. Maybe Eve will somehow unwittingly destroy Villanelle first. Maybe it will be a mutually assured destruction. 

But Villanelle can try to make this work, at least, whatever that looks like. She has to. 

No ... Villanelle wants to. There's a difference. 

===

Naturally, Villanelle succeeds in cocking things up instantly.

Eve comes came at her so fast - Villanelle doesn't even have time to think, her subconscious efficiently and automatically taking over for her, throwing her hands up in defense -

The next thing she knows, there's blood soaking onto her hands, there's shouting, SHE'S shouting, and Eve has slumped forward into her arms. 

Without even trying, Villanelle has done what she came here to do, even though now there's nothing she wants less.

Of course Eve would faint from the pain, the uselessly untrained civilian she is. 

Villanelle doesn't have a whole lot of time to waste, particularly on trying to figure out what the hell just happened. Gingerly and swiftly, she lays Eve down onto the ground on her back, wrapping Eve's towels around the knife and the wound (which Villanelle has successfully managed not to pull out, not that she's still resentful or anything) to sop up excess blood. Grabbing her duffel bag, she shoves everything of value she can carry into it - spare clothes, her shoebox of cash, her stack of IDs, tools and equipment that cost her too much money or effort to part with, anything personally identifiable she doesn't have time to destroy now - oh and Eve's meat cleaver, she'll probably want that back. Regretfully, most of the leftover curry will have to stay in the fridge, though she grabs a couple of containers out of sentimentality.

While she packs, she calls 999 to report a mugging on the corner of the block, hanging up after answering just enough questions and before they can ask too many. 

A quick glance outside the window shows that the coast is clear for now.

She grabs Eve's wallet from her handbag - not like Eve is going to need it where she's going, anyway - awkwardly slings the handbag around Eve's body, shoves Eve's blood-soaked towels into a plastic bag and crams that into her backpack as well. Lifting an unconscious but still-breathing Eve into her arms, she sweeps her eyes around the apartment one last time. One mutilated wall, a broken champagne glass, no real visible blood stains. There's no point in trying to hide anything that has happened here. She's definitely not getting her rental deposit back. 

Slamming the apartment door close behind her and not looking back, she dashes down four flights of stairs, cradling her precious cargo in her arms, abandoning her at the location she gave to emergency services, and then moves away. She waits around a corner until she hears the sound of sirens, and sees Eve's body being tended to. Once she has audible confirmation that the emergency department Eve will be taken to belongs to the hospital she suspects it will be, drawing as little attention as possible, sticking to the walls and the shadows, she runs.

There is a lot of running and hiding that day. She notices a different air to the local police and security in the area, and the prickling feeling at the back of her neck intensifies when she becomes aware of women of her stature and appearance being stopped and questioned.

Maybe she's finally outstayed her welcome in the country.  

She finds an unoccupied petrol station bathroom, and with her trusty switch knife, slowly saws her hair off. It's a little messy when she's done, but it works, coming in just above her neck. 

She briefly considers her next options, but in the end, there is only one that she seriously entertains. She's not leaving this country until she sees Eve one more time. And there aren't that many places for her to loiter for an extended period of time.

Villanelle waits until it's dark to slink back to her and Eve's block - well, hers no longer. Thanks to the neighbourhood having a certain reputation, there is no hint remaining of a somewhat violent crime having taken place that very day in that street.

There is one police car, parked in front of her former apartment building. The light in what used to be her apartment is on, and some very loud shouting is emanating from the window, audible all the way down the block. Someone has found what remains of her apartment, apparently, and they aren't happy. 

No safer place than the eye of the storm, Villanelle supposes. She sneaks around the back path, climbs into Eve's backyard, and appreciates that Eve never got that wonky back window fixed. She doesn't have the gear to replace a smashed window pane right now.

She's intensely curious if Eve is in hospital now, if Eve made it through okay, if Eve is alright - if Eve is alive - but there are no reports of any fatalities on the news, and she ought to lay low for now. It's out of her hands now anyway. 

The rest of the evening consists of emptying her duffel bag and a quick dinner of some of the provisions she stocked up on while wandering around the city during the day. She has no way of knowing how long she'll be here, and she's likely going to need to venture out again soon, but for now she'll be in good shape. She dumps the bloody towels into a bucket of bleach - they're permanently ruined, but she doesn't like the idea of throwing them out the state they're in now - washes Eve's meat cleaver, and returns it to its storage place.

Then she collapses on Eve's couch and falls fast asleep.

===

The next morning, after a passable night's sleep, for lack of anything better to do, Villanelle explores Eve's home.

She has already gone through every room at least once, when she first arrived and was still looking into Eve, purely for academic and practical purposes. But ever since then, she hasn't really taken the time to learn about the place. 

Eve's furnishings are utilitarian, unattractive, and lived-in, like she picked out the last remaining Ikea pieces available with the only criteria being that she needed it and it fit in the house. The walls are mostly bare, covered sparsely in half-hearted artwork and posters that mainly seem to have been hung there because there was already a nail in the wall that needed something hanging from it. Any photos dotting window sills or cupboard tops consist solely of friends and family from Eve's younger life, with none of any recent husbands or friends or colleagues, deceased or otherwise. She seems to be a state of permanent unpacking, with unopened boxes sat next half-filled bookshelves in the living room, and more buried deep inside a built-in walk-in closet next to the kitchen, as if she can't decide what from her former life should be put on display to remind her of who she used to be, or if she hasn't committed to actually living here yet.

The area that sees the most and clearest use is a worn spot on a soft brown couch, covered in cushions and blankets. The coffee table between it and the TV is stacked high with worn, read, and snipped newspapers dating back to at least a year. A battered laptop with cables and peripheries dangling from it occupies a spot of honour, next to multiple rings formed by repeated mugs of tea. Villanelle has full confidence that this must be where Eve curls up to research her, night after night, and the thought makes her so warm inside that she sit downs for a while, staring straight ahead, seeing what Eve might from the same position. 

After a while, she moves to the kitchen, which is where she and Eve have spent the majority of their time together, for good or bad. The kitchen table is fairly small, with four chairs squeezed too tightly around it, as if Eve picked it just in case there would be company but she never seriously planned on having any. Everything is kept clean and tidy here, with plates and bowls and utensils all stacked neatly inside their cabinets and drawers. There are some unwashed dishes still in the sink, and Villanelle realises that some are from the night that she last came over, when she found Eve stirring a pot of curry on the stove. The thought has her reaching for the dish soap and sponge. She mechanically washes and dries the dishes, returning them to where they look like they belong.

Around the back are the washer and dryer, cleaning tools and cleaning materials. Villanelle usually finds herself on top of the dryer when she comes in through the window. Tucked away in a corner is a familiar-looking locksmith toolbox. Poking around inside, she locates, among other things, a pair of what appears to be spare keys nestled inside, and a test proves that they work in the back door. She pockets one, for now; she can always return it to Eve later. 

Having located a vacuum, Villanelle decides to give the whole ground floor a once-over, since it seems low on Eve's priorities. It follows with her image of Eve's former husband being the one in charge of the domestic responsibilities. When she gets to the entrance way and cleans around a shoe rack with outdoor and indoor slippers lined up on it, she recalls a random tidbit she once read in one of those "things to know about Asian cultures" guide books, that many people in Asian culture do not wear outside shoes inside the house. Having remembered that, she decides to play it safe and removes her shoes, lining them up neatly at the door. Then she vacuums again.

Three more times, just to be thorough.

She can't put off going upstairs forever. She has to vacuum up there too.

Upstairs consists of one bathroom, and Eve's bedroom. Villanelle has very distinct memories what happened last time she was in that bathroom with Eve. 

Villanelle finishes vacuuming the upstairs corridor. She lingers. 

She should probably take a shower after everything that happened yesterday. She leaves the vacuum at the top of the steps and takes a deep breath. 

The bathroom is rather unchanged. Villanelle strips out of her clothes and steps into the shower. Eve has some nice, delicate soaps, shampoos and conditioners; at least she cares a little bit about her skin and hair. She has a small but solid selection of skincare products as well. Villanelle will take care to moisturise afterwards.

When she steps out of the shower, dripping wet, her hand hovers over the sole towel hanging on the towel rack. She should probably look for a spare towel instead of using Eve's used ones.

There aren't any clean towels in the bathroom. What kind of monster doesn't keep clean towels in the bathroom? 

Taking Eve's towel, her hands shaking just a little, she pats down her hair lightly, then her body, and wraps herself in it, resisting the urge to bury her face in it.

She's left all her clothes downstairs, and she's going to have to go back down there to get dressed.

She hasn't checked out Eve's bedroom yet, though. She might as well. While she's up here and all. 

Holding her breath, she pokes her head inside Eve's bedroom, then her shoulders, then the rest of her body.

There's nothing out of the ordinary about Eve's bedroom. It's a perfectly ordinary bedroom, with closets to the side, a pile of worn clothes tossed neatly on top of a dresser, and a full-sized, somewhat unkempt bed covered in clean creamy sheets in the centre. 

Villanelle ignores the bed for now, and decides to go through Eve's belongings. There are hangers of collared shirts and slacks, and drawers of boring-looking underwear and lingerie. 

In a drawer next to Eve's bed, she finds an ornate wooden box, one with carvings and faded brown paint, and opening the lid she sees her own face smiling back at her. Eve has a small collection of Villanelle-related paraphernalia that she keeps right next to her head when she sleeps. No big deal.  

She carefully closes the box, and returns it to where she found it, her heart hammering out of her chest. 

She's been thinking about it all night and all morning, even though she's tried not to. She wants to behave, she needs to keep her hunger in check, she has to prove to herself that she can exist alongside Eve without the power of her want consuming everything entirely. It's an invasion of Eve's boundaries, boundaries she needs to respect and reinforce now, because it matters to her that she does. 

But oh, she can't help herself. Villanelle lets the towel drop to the ground. 

Eve doesn't have to know. 

Pulling a sweater from Eve's pile of worn clothes, she crawls into Eve's bed, sliding under the covers and trapping herself in the sheets. Lying on her side, pressing her cheek into Eve's pillow, savouring the softness of Eve's sheets on her bare skin, she buries her face into the sweater, and slides three fingers inside her up to the knuckle, drowning her senses in Eve's essence. 

She pumps wave after wave of pleasure through her body, losing track of the number of time she comes.

She imagines Eve coming home after a miraculously fast recovery, walking into her bedroom to find Villanelle rutting her own hand in Eve's bed. Instead of walking away, or kicking Villanelle out of the bed, Eve slides in with her, removing her own clothes, pressing their bodies flush against each other, replacing Villanelle's hand with Eve's own -

Her hips thrust down onto Eve's imaginary fingers, again and again and again - 

She comes hard, one long, painful, final time, clenching so tightly around her fingers she loses feeling in them, and forgets who she is for a while. 

When she comes to, her fingers are so dry that it hurts to remove them, and she has to wriggle her hand around until she regains feeling in them. 

She washes her hands in the bathroom. She should really replace Eve's sheets. And stop fucking herself in Eve's bed. 

The couch isn't as comfortable as Eve's bed is. Eve won't be back that soon.

Villanelle will behave after. She promises. 

===

When WILL Eve be back? That's the next question.

Seeing Eve with her own eyes, alive, breathing - not dead - will go a long way in settling her feelings of restlessness. In spite of lingering questions about the prudence of being out in public, after vacuuming every room upstairs repeatedly and determining the hospital is still open to visitors until evening, Villanelle decides she has to know.

Dusting her jaw with a smattering of makeup to give her face an illusion of thicker brows and facial hair, strapping on her chest binder, and pulling on a beanie to flatten her hair, she passes from a distance as a mousy-looking hipster. That has to be good enough. 

She packs a bag of things someone might need during an extended hospital stay - a few changes of clean clothes, toiletries, a hair brush, a jacket, in case Eve gets cold.

Once she gets to the hospital, she quickly determines the hospital wing Eve would be staying in, and slips past or talks her way there. 

Eve is unconscious and pale, but breathing on her own. The beeping machines and cords hooked up to her indicate that the body they are attached to is still very much alive.

Villanelle lets out a breath she didn't realise she was holding. 

She's not sure what she would have done if she had come across Eve's lifeless body instead. For starters, she probably wouldn't have; they wouldn't have a cadaver taking up valuable hospital bed space. But Villanelle would have probably torched the place and turned it upside down in search of confirmation, and upon finding it in the morgue or wherever it is they keep fresh corpses, what would she have done?

Lifeless bodies hold no meaning for Villanelle. They're merely watery sacks of organic matter, devoid of value the split second a soul no longer animates them. In spite of what she had bluffed to Anna's face in their last encounter, she wouldn't have known, not until she pulled the trigger, if she could have actually done it, and in the end she never did find out. But the moment the woman with the blown-out brains hit the ground, she was Anna to Villanelle no longer. Just another sack of meat to step over and leave behind. 

Villanelle doesn't like the idea that Eve would become valueless to her with such ease, but she can't help the way she is, and so she's relieved that Eve is still in there, somewhere, just resting quietly, and not shrunken and dying forever - at her hand, no less.

Not for the first time since yesterday, she wonders what caused her body to move on auto-pilot in self-defense, because that's what it was - a completely unintentional, unplanned throwing up of her arms to ward off the woman moving quickly at her, the switch blade still in her hand from before. Her stupid, broken body and her stupid, broken brain are still stupid and broken.

Fine, Villanelle must still fear Eve somehow - she ought to just accept that and get that out of the way sooner this time around.

As she starts trying to delve into the reason why, though, a nosy-looking nurse starts trying to talk to her, asking how such a handsome young man like her knows Eve, and does she know that Eve is on her way to becoming a regular at this hospital, and does she have any idea why this is the case and what's going on in Eve's life, and is there anyone in Eve's life that can keep an eye out for Eve, so Villanelle leaves Eve's stuff behind and beats a hasty retreat. 

===

Altogether it takes about two weeks for Eve to recover and return to her home. Meanwhle, Villanelle has vacuumed and dusted too much, done Eve's laundry, fixed some rickety furniture that was either set up improperly or simply was bugging the hell out of her, unpacked some of Eve's boxes (she can just repack it for Eve later if it was an inconvenience), snuck out early in the morning or late at night in public to restock on groceries and cleaning supplies, watched a ton of TV, and masturbated a whole lot in Eve's bed. She's relieved that she has simply taken to stripping Eve's bed sheets and washing them daily as of late. 

She has also officially or unofficially quit all her jobs by contacting some former places of employment with some excuse, and simply not showing up to others. Where she can, she blames her lady stalker for having to go into hiding, which is not altogether untrue. 

It's hard to tell how Eve feels about seeing Villanelle in her living room. Not murderous and not excruciatingly mad is a good start. She just seems tired and resigned, which could go either way.

Villanelle has also had quite some time to herself to think about what she wants to do next.

Sometime in the past two weeks, she has come to the realisation that there is no true freedom. The only choice that is exists is enslaving yourself to some purpose or goal or higher power, and hoping to high hell it's one you actually want. 

Right now she can think of no more meaningful cause than the woman who has just walked back into her life and tumbled face first onto her couch. 

So, when the opportunity arises, Villanelle decides to just come straight out and ask if she can stay with Eve, right here, with her. Apparently, the subconscious part of her keeping Eve at arm's length that acts on autopilot is still going strong, which might make things a bit difficult, but at least she won't be throwing herself inappropriately at the other woman if Eve does let her stay. 

Eve, at least, seems to entertain the prospect, and wants to talk it out, which is great, because Villanelle has missed talking to Eve.

At least until Villanelle tells her about her little experiment that very morning, because she had been bored, and just a little curious if what she had done to Eve had been a fluke, or if it was something she could pull out of her back pocket if she needed, and so she decided just to walk into a guy, knife extended, just to see if she could do to him what she had done to Eve - 

Her subsequent hyperventilating and sweating palms showed that this is not a hat-trick she can pull off with ease, even if it can be done again, but Eve is too busy trying to murder her with a couch cushion to hear her out. 

The remainder of their conversation is enjoyable until it becomes excruciating, as Eve deliberately reminds Villanelle of things Villanelle would rather forget, and Villanelle has to remind herself she wants to stay here and share a roof with this woman before they manage to come to an agreement of sorts. She has the sneaking feeling that Eve is enjoying herself far more than Villanelle is during their exchange, which is the only thing that mollifies her - the thought that at least one of them is getting something out of it.

This must be progress, because she's not used to being okay with other people enjoying themselves more than she is. 

Villanelle makes sure to set explicit boundaries, though, and she can instantly see the hurt in Eve's eyes. It's gratifying to know that Eve still wants more, after everything, but she knows she's not ready for more yet, and to be honest she doesn't think Eve is really ready either.  

Honesty - that's something Villanelle is going to have to work on, not just to Eve, but to herself.

Right now, she honestly wants to do something nice for Eve while teaching her a lesson at the same time, and it manifests in the form of a giant plate of sizzling sausages and meatballs drizzled in honey. 

Eve, to her credit, eats without complaint and only minimal disapproval. 

Villanelle can live with that. 

For the first time in forever, she's glad to just be. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which each chapter gets progressively longer and longer, but I'm finally done, and wow I want to take a nap. 
> 
> Thanks to anyone who's been following along. I wanted to commit my head-canon for Villanelle from the first part, ended up going way more into detail than I thought I would, and in the progress probably borrowed/stole a lot from what the next intended part would have been. So to anyone who was hoping for a continuation to "Someone to sit in my chair and ruin my sleep", this is sort-of-partly it, though back in time! 
> 
> Holy crap, anyway, I didn't quite exceed the word count but I HAD MANY WORDS. 
> 
> Someone to sit in my chair word count: 35,230, 22 chapters  
> A girl in the midlands word count: 31,404, 8 chapters
> 
> I really need to work on my pacing, huh. Verbosity is probably a given, it's a curse. 
> 
> Domestic Villaneve, here I come! *cracks knuckles, falls asleep, starts drooling on my pillow*


End file.
